Having a crown fitted

OMG I got myself so nervous and scared when it came to having an hour appointment at the dentist for a crown to be fitted. When she told me she was going to fit a crown I asked her if  it would hurt and she said yes, it can be painful. So, being naturally nervous and wary of dentists since knocking my top front teeth out as a pretender and going through a lit of painful dental restoration work then, you can imagine how I was feeling at this prospect. I have had teeth extracted (one of the joys of having fibromyalgia and ME is that your teeth and gums are affected and it is common for teeth to crumble and need extracting). I convinced myself in the end that whatever she needed to do it couldn't be worse than having a tooth extracted. The noises and pressure of that I find almost unbearable  but then I went onto Google this morning to see what the process of fitting a dental crown is exactly so I knew what to expect. It all told me a post would be fitted to my tooth and a top cemented on to that. I know that is what I have in my top front teeth. Several times when ai was younger the temporary crowns would fall out and the post was visible. I read that it woukd hurt at the time and afterwards too and got myself to anxious I nearly backed out altogether. But then my husband reasoned with me that I woukd just be delaying the inevitable. So I made the final decision to bite the bullet so to speak and get it done.

When I arrived there was a full waiting room so I had to hover out by the front door. Then a dental nurse told me they wouldn't be long and soon enough the dentist came out to get me. I told her how scared I was and asked if it was OK for me to put a podcast on in my earphones. She explained the process was very like having a filling, something I am sadly used to. 

She rubbed numbing gel on my gums, gave me two painful injections to make my even more numb and then put a filling on the tooth. Then the dreaded drill and suction combo came into play as she drilled and shaped the filling to allow for a crown to fit. All of that was ok. She caught a painful bit a few times but apologised and reacted when I let her know it hurt. 

Before I knew it she said it was all done!

Then the dental nurse who was also the scanning nurse used a really cool piece of technology to scan inside my mouth. I had a probe a bit like the crevice tool of a hoover inside my mouth and it made a fast clicking noise. It was taking thousands of phitis and creating a 3D image of my teeth and gums on the screen. When that was done they ordered the crown and made me an appointment to go back in a week. She then stuck a temporary crown in which was painless and quick.

Since then my gum has been sensitive in that area but she said that is perfectly normal. I haven't had any pain at all. Hopefully this will work and be a solution to my repeatedly lost fillings but only time will tell.

Dudley Zoo

I have to confess, until we went to The Pet Show last year, I had never heard of Dudley Zoo. It took us almost a year to finally make it there for a day out, but we finally made it last week.

We were prepared for a hilly walk- the zoo is set on the site of Dudley Castle, with the castle in the centre of the zoo. We had the special pushchair, drinks, picnic, coats, ear defenders etc all with us.

I will start at the beginning- the car park. We went on a cooler day, but still in the school summer holidays. The car park had plenty of space, but we really needed the chair to get from the car to the zoo entrance. The surface is gravel which leads out onto a tarmac pavement to the entrance, which is uphill.

The zoo entrance itself is indoors, the same location as the shop. The staff there didn't even look at our DLA letters, but we always have them anyway just in case someone actually looks at them one day. The lady who served us mentioned some maps and daily talk guides were somewhere roughly behind her, but with the children all so eager to get through the entrance I wasn't able to really listen to her. It would have been better if she had handed me one of each to be honest. The information is all on their website, which we accessed with good signal throughout the day, and there are plenty of maps around the site on boards.

Once through the entrance, the usual search for the toilets ensued. For your information- they are into the zoo, then turn left and they are next to the chair lift. The chair lift! Oh....you have to be 1.2m tall and over 7 years old (why is beyond me) and each chair is single seated. So...my very nervous, unpredicable and anxious 9 year old was tall enough and old enough to go on but I was terrified she would panic half way up it and there would be nothing I could do. My over confident 6 year old was too short and too young to go on. I can't understand why they don't change some of them to double seats. Anyway, moving on....

There is a land train that takes you from the bottom of the chair lift to the top via a longer route. This has a carriage at the back to put pushchairs in, but with everyone ramming their buggies in there like they were, we didn't are risk the chair getting damaged or falling out. We walked up and later on my husband walked down whilst I took the children on the land train.

I thoroughly recommend either having two able people who can carry the chair up and down stairs, or following the red dotted line on their maps. There are hidden steps around the site, all of which are shown on their map and easily avoided with the red route, but that often means taking a very long way around. Frustratingly it seems they could replace some of these steps with a ramp- not all of them seem possible to me- but they have stuck with the steps. Maybe it is something to do with their age or something, I really don't know. What I do know is that we need to go back again to turn right out of the zoo entrance to see the lorikeets, chimps and whatever else was up that way as there was no way we were getting past the funfair and back up another hill at the end of the day.

There is a sign at the entrance to the lemur walkthrough stating strictly no pushchairs allowed. With the combined age of the two girls 'working' there being less than my shoe size I decided not to even try explaining the special pushchair we use is actually in lieu of a wheelchair as my daughter wasn't that keen anyway. The general feeling from all the staff on the site is that they are not bothered. They don't want to be there and can't wait to get home. This is a real shame.

The worst part of our day was when we decided to have a rest by the sea lions. I only wanted to get some crisps and drinks- we can't eat or drink anything out, ever. The queue was so slow I can't even describe it to you. There were five members of staff behind the counter, two tills on the go and yet they seemed to be doing nothing. When we finally got to the till I wanted to pay for 5 bags of crisps- he couldn't find them on the till, then I ordered an orange juice, to be told they don't do it (it was on their menu above his head), a latte and three hot waters. I also needed a spare cup for the bottle of orange juice my son then found in the fridges behind us. I paid and we waited, and waited, and waited. The people before us were still waiting for two hot drinks, then our latte arrived with no hot waters. I had to remind them about those- fair enough, it happens....then I asked for that spare cup. I asked one girl, she stared at me and ignored me. I called her and asked again. Nothing. Then I asked the boy. Nothing. Then I got the attention of a second boy- the third member of staff all of whom were stood right next to eachother. I told him I was waiting for a spare cup, which I couldn't reach myself on account of the other people still waiting for their hot drinks, and that there were literally three of them stood there doing nothing and ignoring me so could he please just reach up and pass me a cup. Once cup. At last.

It seems, from what I overheard outside, that this was not just our experience there.

I should mention that my son momentarily lost his mobile phone and someone had handed it in to this same cafe. When I telephoned it they answered, didn't tell me where they were, couldn't confirm which animals they were near, but when I kept guessing they were able to confirm. My son did get his phone back. Perhaps they should have played one of the cafe games whilst they had it in their possession.

There are lots of different animals to see and little areas for the children to play and let off some steam on the way around. We had our picnic near the top of the chair lift in an area that seemed to be an old room of the castle. This had a lovely view but I did wonder where you could have a picnic in bad weather.

I liked that there weren't lots of temptations to spend more and more money during the day. There was a facepainting kiosk near the dreaded cafe, and a sweet stall near the entrance, but not much else. The exception we found was a harnessed trampoline in the castle walls. Our children all thoroughly enjoyed that as none of them had been on one for years.

The funfair was reasonably priced too. For the three children to go on everything they wanted to it cost us £15- far cheaper than at a travelling funfair. They have a token system so I would recommend adding up the tokens you will need before you go and buy any as it is cheaper to buy more.

We came away with lots of photos of our children poking their heads through boards pretending to be the different animals, photos of their favourite animals from the day and candyfloss.

Long time no blog

I would love to blame this stunning weather we have been having, or the movement of the earth relative to the sun, but really? It has more to do with a lack of time where I still have the energy or brain power left to put any thoughts together to form a sentence.

Things here have continued to increase in their craziness....apparently that is possible, yes. I wouldn't have believed you if you had said that to me a year ago, yet here we are.

The same always helps to maintain the calmness...

Our little dog with a huge personality is making her feelings known increasingly and is still running to our youngest when she has a meltdown, which is amazing.
Besides that our animals seem to be all confused. Our ginger cat regularly sits in with our rabbit (sadly we had the death of a rabbit to deal with too), our rabbit plays with our dog and also growls at her when he has had enough- it really is something to watch them all together... 

Our eldest and youngest both had a lot of tummy aches and other symptoms, such as mouth ulcers, rashes and generally feeling bad that led me to doing allergy and intolerance testing for them both. It turns out that they both cannot have corn due to intolerances. I thought this would be simple enough- WRONG!! Corn is in EVERYTHING. It is so hard. Just so you know I am not just blowing this into something it isn't....

Family member 1: Allergy to dairy. Intolerant to corn and derivatives, cashew nuts, gluten, celery and more.

Family member 2: Allergy to egg. Intolerant to gluten. Intolerant but no symptoms as yet to dairy. Intolerant to cooked tomatoes.

Family member 3: Allergy to dairy products. Intolerant to gluten, corn and derivatives, peanuts and more.

Family member 4: Allergy to soya, dairy products, egg. Intolerant to gluten, yeast and more.

Family member 5: no intolerances or allergies but lives with us so has to eat all the weird food we do.

Add to this us all having hayfever, one with asthma, two with excema and it is crazy. Eating out cannot happen except for a very small choice at McDonalds, and then only at ones we can trust (not ideal).

Shopping for food is a nightmare as I have to read ALL ingredients on EVERYTHING. I cannot buy meat in the shop, it has to be from a butcher who butchers their own meat. Any processed food is a no-no. This means a lot of home cooking, most of which is a disaster because all recipes need to be altered for our diets. Plus, add on top of that the fact the children's autism and sensory processing difficulties and I wonder how they actually eat anything at all.

We are back in the loop of potato products (very few are ok but thankfully I have found a handful that work) with peas and carrots, crisps, biscuits and cereal. Of course, each of these has to be the specific brand in the specific box/bag. Our trusted cereal changed their packaging recently to advertise the new Jurassic Park film, so now our youngest can't eat those anymore :(

The rate at which we are going through Bob's Red Mill 1 for 1 flour is noones business. I am in a bit of a panic internally at the moment actually with a birthday this week coming, and the inevitable pressure of having to make a cake without all of the above ingredients. Plus, icing- this contains corn flour so is a no-no. I have learned to make my own but it is time consuming and a pain in the proverbial. I am still experimenting with cake recipes too and they might work one day but not the next- like all gluten free cooking it seems. I have discovered they like a particular brand of marzipan though- bonus!

Besides the food issues, we have been trying to keep as busy as we can, allowing for down time inbetween busy times. It seems to be working on the whole, but the days out we have been doing are very child centred. I still know that if I tried to persuade them into anything else they hadn't picked then we would be met with resistance leading to issues.

We have managed a canal tour though, something I have wanted to do since moving here, but ssshhhh....don't tell them it was my idea ;)

We have had a nice break from professionals too so things have calmed down around appointments until next week. Oh, and our eldest has started to feel able to go out a bit more and even talk to other people. Yesterday he even went on a day trip with people he hadn't met before (to a place he knows very well and with a phone to contact me if needed) and had an awesome day. We even just caught him outside playing with the boy from next door over the fence :)

Our eldest daughter has been struggling more, but she always does over these months, and we keep having to get her through, which is what we are doing currently.

Our youngest is still the whirlwind she always has been.