Dental Emergency

            On Tuesday morning I finished memorizing “L'homme à la tête de chou" (The Man with the Head of Cabbage) by Serge Gainsbourg.

            I worked on my journal.

            In the late morning I gathered together all of my insurance info from both Ontario Works and Green Shield and at 11:35 I headed for my appointment at Midtown Dental.

            On my way up Brock near the site of the old Beer Store I saw a big screen TV sitting on the sidewalk. I noticed that it had a sign taped to it and so I stopped to read it. It said, “Sound ok. Picture no". Just what I need, a big screen radio. Good name for a band: "Big Screen Radio".

            I locked my bike on Yonge Street and walked to look for 20 Bloor East. The address wasn’t marked on the outside so I went back to 2 Bloor East and down into the bottom of the Hudson's Bay Centre to walk east through the mall. It was a long walk. I'd been told that it was next to RBC and across from the post office. I stopped and asked someone along the way. I finally found the place next to the food court but the door was locked and it didn't look like there was anyone inside. I was just thinking of calling them but then I tried knocking first and while I was doing that a woman walking towards me from the direction I’d come called out that she’d open the door. This was Alexia, who had given me the appointment.

Once we were inside and she’d squirted me with hand sanitizer she told me to sit down and she would take my temperature. After a few minutes she brought a little instrument which she held about ten centimetres from my forehead. But she was having trouble getting it to work and tried several times with no success. I suggested that her thermometer might need its temperature taken. She finally got it to work and she said the reading was excellent.

I spent about half an hour filling out and signing forms. It was a good thing my wrists get lots of exercise.

Alexia was again impressed by my double name and thought it was “cool" that I work as an art model.

The website for this place shows that several dentists work there but that day there was only Dr Ramlaggan, Alexia and one hygienist assisting him. Dr Ramlaggan says “cool" a lot too.

After the x-rays the dentist told me I had two options. I could add another five to ten years to the life of my tooth withy a root canal or I could have it removed. He said that I could discuss it with Alexia, who is the financial coordinator. She made it fairly clear that I only had one option, since neither Ontario Works nor Green Shield would cover a root canal and the procedure costs $1200. She told me that Green Shield would cover an extraction but that there would be a balance. She said however that she would help me out, which seemed to mean that I would not be charged the balance.

Alexia said that if I signed the consent form I could get the procedure done that day and so I did. I sat alone in the operating room for a long time and almost fell asleep.

I found Dr Ramlaggan to have an exceptionally good manner with patients. He let me know everything he was about to do and warned me in a very friendly tone of what I might feel or hear.

Both the doctor and the hygienist were well armoured with full length plastic shields over their faces.

The first thing he did was to put some freezing gel on my gums and then to wait about ten minutes for it to kick in. This served to somewhat numb the sting of the freezing needle. I’d never had a dentist do that before. I could feel the gel numbing certain parts of my mouth and throat but I still felt the prick of the needle just as much as any other time. It was only the third needle that I didn’t feel. The only pain I felt was at one point when it felt like he was digging into my lip while trying to pry the tooth out.

The dentist prescribed seven days of naproxen.

The hygienist gave me extra gauze to absorb the blood coming from the hole where my tooth had been. She told me that if I run out and still need something to put there I could use a black tea bag, but never a green tea bag. I asked why and she informed me that black tea suppresses bleeding while green tea induces bleeding. That was a “Hmmm!" moment because I'd never heard that before. When I looked this up later I also saw that green tea can cause iron deficiency.

She told me I shouldn’t spit, rinse or brush until the next day. She said I should eat but only soft food until Wednesday.

When I got back to Parkdale I went straight to the drug store to fill my prescription.

When I got home I saw that my appointment must have lasted two and a half hours. I took out the bloodstained gauze and had a late lunch of a hard boiled egg and some yogourt. It was weird eating with my mouth still frozen. It was funny when I felt an itch on my face but couldn’t feel myself scratch it. I took the first of the naproxen pills with lunch. I put new gauze in but had to throw it away because I’d forgotten that I was supposed to wet it first. I put another in and then took a siesta, sleeping well for a first time in a few days.

When I woke up the freezing was gone.

I worked on writing my journal.

For dinner I avoided meat and just had two carrots and two potatoes with gravy while watching two episodes of the game show, Take A Good Look, starring Ernie Kovacs.

The first game, from November 5, 1959 had Cesar Romero, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Jim Backus as panellists. Because this was before Backus was a star of Gilligan’s Island he was famous as the voice the cartoon character Mr Magoo. It was because of this it seems that Zsa Zsa had brought in her little Pekingese dog, which she had named Mr Magoo.

The first guest, an attractive young woman, was not identified to the audience.

The first clue featured a woman in a slinky gown come out with a tray containing a bowl of three eggs and a spread out deck of cards.

Cesar Romero guesses that the guest is a beauty queen and that she is from Mississippi. He then says he knows who she is and so he’ll pass.

The second clue shows two boards with tennis shoes on the end walking back and forth behind a curtain.

Jim Backus guesses that she won the Miss America contest in 1958.

Zsa Zsa is confused by the shoes in the boards. Ernie explains that they were boards walking representing the Boardwalk in Atlantic City where the Miss America pageant took place. The guest is Mary Ann Mobley. She says she is now studying in New York with Lee Strasbourg and she hopes to one day perform on Broadway.

Mary Ann Mobley never did appear on Broadway but she did have a career in television and film. She was friends with Elvis, who considered her a true southern lady, and co-starred with him in “Girl Happy" and "Harum Scarum".

The second guests were a man and woman.

The first clue shows a man and a woman playing chess and the woman checkmates him.

“Zsa Zsa says, “She beat him in chest!” Zsa Zsa tends to speak out of turn and can’t hold back from saying what is on her mind whenever it pops up. Since Zsa Zsa has already spoken up Ernie allows the questions to start with her. She asks, “What you two do do you do together?” The guest responds with an accent as thick as Zsa Zsa’s and says, "You will have to speak slowly because you have an accent.”

Jim Backus establishes that the couple is married and that she is European while he is from the United States.

Cesar Romero guesses that they are both athletes.

The second clue has a man covered in red tape spinning past the panel’s desk while Zsa Zsa's dog barks angrily at him.

Cesar guesses that they were wound up in red tape. He basically guesses that she is from behind the iron curtain and they got married in Australia but that was only almost right. Ernie explains the first clue being a checkmate as in she is the man’s Czech mate. The guests won $100 but they could not accept it because it would ruin their amateur standing. The money would go to the Olympic Fund. Olga Fikotová was a discus thrower from Czechoslovakia and won the gold medal at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. There she met Harold Connolly from the United States, who won the gold for the hammer throw. They decided to marry. But there was a lot of red tape before that could be accomplished. They got married in Prague and 25,000 showed up for the wedding. She moved to the States and wanted to continue to compete for Czechoslovakia but her country’s government rejected her and so she competed for the United States. She and Connolly divorced in 1975 and she is now a fitness coach in Las Vegas at the age of 88.

It was revealed beforehand that the third guest was Lathrup Whittington Junior, the college student that started the fad of goldfish swallowing in 1939.

The first clue shows Ernie as a parade baton twirler with a mechanical wrist that keeps going around and around.

The second clue shows a screen with the video of a cat with its feet in a fish bowl. Zsa Zsa’s dog goes to the end of the desk beside Cesar to get a closer look.

Zsa Zsa guesses during Jim’s turn that the guest ate a gold fish and Jim guesses that it was at Harvard.

Ernie wants to show the third clue because it was so much trouble to get the pet borough there. A guy dressed as a prospector panning for gold comes out with a young borough. Zsa Zsa's dog is barking frantically. Ernie then picks up the borough and carries it off stage.

Before Lathrup leaves Ernie gives him a bowl with a goldfish in it and a loaf of rye bread and some mustard on the side.

In the next show from November 12, 1959, Zsa Zsa was replaced by Ernie's wife Edie Adams. Ernie introduces her as "the good looking broad in the middle, who should be at home doing dishes.” Edie says, “I never saw you before in my life."

In the first clue a woman goes to a butcher shop and instead of the usual hot dogs takes a ham with cherries and places it in front of the first guest.

Cesar guesses the guest is an athlete in baseball, that he plays for the Dodgers and that he is their star pitcher Don Drysdale. But Ernie reminds the panel that they need to reveal more than the guest’s identity. Cesar says that Don is now working as an actor on television on a western called The Lawman and that is the answer.

Even though the mystery has been revealed after the first clue, Ernie wants to show the second clue. There are three plates hanging from a curtain. Ernie fires a gun and the first plate breaks, he fires again and the second plate breaks, he fires several times at the last plate and it does not break and so the guy with the hammer from behind the curtain comes out and hits it from the front.

During the banter between guests Ernie says he’d forgotten the middle panellist wasn’t Zsa Zsa. Edie immediately goes into a Hungarian accent to imitate Zsa Zsa.

The second guest, a middle aged, blonde woman is brought out.

The first clue shows Ernie in drag, but still with his moustache and a cigar, miming for help from the upper window of a burning building. Two firemen with a round life net are below. Ernie jumps and breaks through it.

Edie guesses that this was a recent occurrence in the last month.

Jim guesses that it was in the field of politics.

Cesar guesses that she is from Livonia, Michigan. Ernie says, “I could punch him right in the mouth!” Cesar continues that she has been appointed the head of the police and the fire department in Livonia.

Ernie passes Edie a note to read. It says the host is going to do a commercial and it ends with, “What are you doing after the show baby?” The commercial shows Ernie standing before a firing squad as his last cigar is lit for him. The men are about to fire but the aroma from Ernie’s cigar causes them to come around him to savour it.

On his way back to his desk Ernie stops to kiss Edie and declares, “A little sex on the air never hurt!”

The third guest is Martin Cassandorf who in April, 1959, with sixteen other UCLA students set a world phone booth stuffing record.

The first clue shows Ernie as Alexander Graham Bell having just invented the telephone. He calls Watson to come in but the operator tells him the number he has reached is not a working number.

Cesar guesses the guest is a student.

Edie asks if this was in the world of sports and the guest says yes but Ernie intervenes and says no.

The second clue shows footage of two men wrestling in an arena.

Cesar guesses that he took part in a crazy thing like the guy that swallowed the gold fish and that he was the champion telephone climber inner.

Ernie tells Edie not to be so smart around the house and he might slip her the answers. She mentions that she hasn’t been allowed in his study lately and Ernie confirms that. It was because he was in there discussing clues with the staff from the show.

At the end of the show Martin Cassandorf reenacts the phone booth stunt with sixteen of his fellow students.