Bit of a poor few days

[Stan_Lite]

Just thought I'd share with you.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a couple of fillings done. Last Sunday, the day before I came out to Egypt, one of them started giving me a bit of a pain. There was nothing I could do about it as I had an early flight on Monday. I went on to the rig on Wednesday and was in a fair bit of pain so I went to see the rig doctor. He gave me some painkillers and some mouthwash. About 4 in the afternoon, my face started to swell up so I went back to him and he gave me some antibiotics (Augmentin) and said I should probably go back ashore to see a dentist in Cairo. I said I would see what it was like in the morning. On Thursday morning it looked like this:


I decided I should take his advice and arrangements were made for me to go back to Cairo - Luckily, my back to back hadn't left Cairo yet so they turned him around to cover for me.

I got back to Cairo yesterday, having contacted our travel/medical insurance people to arrange a reliable dentist who would invoice the insurance people directly. They couldn't get me an appointment until today so I was just hanging around Cairo yesterday. In the evening, I decided to go to a nearby hotel for dinner as I knew they had a passably good Tex Mex restaurant. When I got there, I decided I would probably need more cash so I went to the ATM - which promptly ate my card

I called my bank and they told me their policy when a card was retained in a foreign ATM was to stop the card immediately. I don't have any other cards so I'm stuck with what little cash I have.

Anyway. I went to the dentist today and I need a root canal filling. He did the preparatory work today but can't do the filling until the infection has completely cleared. He has made an incision in my gum to drain the infection and put some packing in it. I have to go back every day to get the packing changed until the infection has gone. This could take anywhere from 3 to 10 days he says

Looks like I'm going to be stuck in Cairo for god knows how long kicking my heels waiting for the infection to clear. I wouldn't mind but I don't even like bloody Cairo. I can't see my company being too happy about paying me and my hotel bill. I'm not sure what they can claim back from the insurance but I would imagine they'll be out of pocket a fair bit.

I was bored so thought I'd have a bit of a moan - sorry