Saving Skylaire's Terrible Teeth
Donation protected
Only in the last few years has anything of physical value been revealed about my grandfather, who died eight months months before I was born. He was born sporting a caul, in rural Wisconsin to a Viking and a Kraut. A caul is a thin membrane of skin covering the face of a just-born baby. Historically, this membrane freaks the midwife
she disposes of it in horror. The trouble is those born with a caul are said to have second sight - to be able to see the future. My grandfather worked as an architect - self taught. (In my childhood my mother pointed out his buildings - I remember them all being ROUND. (I later learned he also helped design the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway.) From my understanding his greatest accomplishment was envisioning what are now known as solar panels, decades before anyone seemed able to share his vision. Consequently he worked alone in his garage on this and other inventions, and at some point he exhibited and died from, mesothelioma - I don’t know the details, but it all sounded so grim, I only had fragments of facts to piece together into some kind of narrative. Arden had wanted to become a priest, and he helped haul the rocks to the top of Sunnyside in Sierra Madre, California - to be hewn into the Stations of the Cross by my Godfather, Brother Joe Caruso.
Arden had been in the Navy, and later was a Merchant Marine. I really wish I knew more - my “family” is about the farthest from that - my grandparents had four children - two of whom are missing. Literally, missing for more than a decade.
It was only in the last few years, that I was told by my matter-of-fact younger uncle - by way of Facebook as I haven’t seen him since his wedding, when I was only 13 - “you inherited your grandfather’s horrible. teeth.” I did? My mother had a record number of (what I assume were mercury) fillings, drilled into her childhood adult teeth because the dentist said she had “soft teeth.” As an adult and victim of a lifetime of dental woes, I have asked about “soft teeth.”
Apparently this is not a legitimate term in dentist lingo. When my mother was really going crazy I recall she told me she had unnaturally long roots in her teeth. I had had my teeth and roots - and the way the front ones grew in - actually described as “weird” by my previous dentist, Dr. Franco. In 2016, and even though I am not a musician, the MusicCares Foundation approved me for a much-needed root canal and crown on my dead front top center tooth. As a child, I began wearing glasses at 5, I wore make-fun-able corrective shoes until around age 12; my dentist urged for braces but I knew my mother couldn’t really afford them, and boy, do I regret that choice now. Also for a time I was going to be fitted with a back brace for scoliosis but I got out of that one! When I started showing symptoms of a disease which used to kill its victims until a treatment was formulated in the 1940s, It took years for before the correct diagnosis was made. I received treatment (which I was told probably stunted my growth by two or three inches) and it went into “lifetime remission.” I am convinced I brought that illness upon myself, as I internalized pain and suffering, and still do (thank God for alcohol.) Only a few years ago did I discover that I am “a real McCoy” that my grandmother’s grandmother was part of the real McCoy clan; and that the family is prone to something once known as “McCoy Disease” usually a cluster of tumors on the adrenal glands, ocular nerves or brain stem, which would “make the McCoy hopping mad, until he just dropped dead.” (Lots of other interesting people in my bloodlines - at the same wake I discovered I was a McCoy, some relative I never knew I had whispered, “they founded the first underground newspaper for Native Americans. It was a SOCIALIST newspaper.” That’s my mother’s mother’s family. My mother’s father’s family - I have no knowledge of, apart from a report made to the L.O.W.F.I. website years ago, of first-hand UFO sightings around the DMZ during Vietnam. The report ended with “Are you the granddaughter of Arden Alfvegren? I am the unofficial genealogist of the family… let me send you 80 photos of your relatives back in Wisconsin, tell me if you see a resemblance.”
As a kid, I got routine cleanings and never had a cavity as my mother had become a health and wellness fanatic (she’d always been a Jesus hippie) while doctors were hunting for a diagnosis. At the time, my dentist strongly recommended braces. I wish I knew the details now because my teeth grew in weird, like banyan trees, and after I had my wisdom teeth removed at age 17 (one of the only acts of my mother being a mother in my teens - she took me to get them removed while I was still covered.)
***
Flash forward a goodly number of years… and then some more - and then my teeth went bad, seemingly overnight. Long story short I took care of myself and can’t even remember the first cavity I had filled; a good friend was kind enough to help me navigate two separate visits to USC Dental School, meach of my upper jaw back teeth were pulled; the first one disintegrated into a million little pieces. They wouldn’t let me keep the second tooth as a souvenir (my third tooth, I got to keep and mailed it to a friend across the pond.) At the time I had no insurance, not even MediCal. In 2015/16, I reached out to MusiCares, the charitable arm of the Musician’s Union, who had helped me out in the past. They have helped me (me, not a musician, but a music journalist) and countless others (actual musicians!) with all sorts of things, rehab for drugs and alcohol and emergency health and dental issues. The trick with that organization is to be psychic, try to arrange your health crisis near to the end of the fiscal year – because if they don’t spend all they have in their coffers, they get less funding the next go-round.
Wielding a fake ID three years before I could legally drink (thank you, MacArthur Park!), the music editor at the LA Weekly sauntered up to me and said “I hear you’re a great writer. Give me 400 words by Monday morning, and if it’s shit I won’t run it.” Well, he ran my review of the German electronic duo Cluster – and lots more over the course of years. (12 years after that concert, one half of the duo, Herr Rodelius – quoted the last lines of my own review back to me, word-for-word.)
I was idealistic then; I thought all my interactions with editors would run so smoothly. Ha. I couldn’t have been more ignorant. My wonderful editor was eventually sacked and replaced with a bouncy airhead from Teen People whose greatest ambition in life was to interview Beck. She never gave me one assignment, always complaining that I pitched her “old man’s music.”
I have been told I am an orphan; I guess it’s true. I only met my biological father last year – and that was under duress because his sister has been the executor of his “estate” for decades, and when I tracked her down, she was adamant that meeting me would throw Alan over the cliff, that he was living in a board and care that was the last house on the block, due to his (apparently untreated) schizophrenia. She showed me pictures of my two half brothers in Chicago, but wouldn’t tell me their names. She lied and said I had no half-brother with a Japanese mother, which my mother had been insistent upon when I was little. His name she said was marc Kimora. Only after Alan had to undergo emergency surgery did this aunt of mine (Alan calls her a demon), give me his contact information because he needed a ride back from the hospital. Who drove him there? My Japanese half-brother, who I discovered lives less than a 5 minute drive from my house. (I still haven’t made contact with him but I did pick up an Obamaphone for Alan so that he can contact his lawyer, about wrestling away from the “demon,” his own military pension.)
My life as it stands is exploding with chronic pain. In the last few months, my mouth has been giving me Hell. Literally, Hell. I have been living with some kind of serious tooth infection for what seems like years now. Last year I tripped and smashed my face up, broke my nose and nearly knocked out my other top front tooth (next to the “weird” one with the crazy roots.) I went again to another urgent care - where I was told the damn thing could just fall out at any moment. I called the dental school they referred me to - UCLA - who told me they couldn’t help me in any way except by pulling it out. I was desperate for a second opinion, and took to social media. I called, after hours, Dr. Rachel Fine out of Glendale, who was kind enough to squeeze me in the next morning, as it was an emergency. I was very nervous. This is not West Virginia. Having a missing front tooth would add nothing but another negative burden, for me, a native and current resident of Los Angeles, where everyone is fit and stylish and beautiful and looking as though they stepped, airbrushed, from the pages of a fashion magazine (or so the logic goes.)
The foyer of Dr. Fine’s office really made me feel at home. A mid-century modern light fixture hung invitingly, from the ceiling. A cart offered tea and coffee and even cappuccino. The table version of Ms. Pacman and various black and white art prints of the area in a previous life, hung along the walls. I was convinced this was my new dentist.
She took x rays - and told me that I would need a root canal on that now-loose front tooth. (A lot of pain comes from this tooth and weird cold patches and general ickyness.) If I just stopped being a klutz and left my mouth alone, some kind of healing process would take place in the following month or so, that my mouth would work itself out in terms of just keeping my tooth anchored in my mouth. Whew. I did not know what this visit would or should cost but when I made it to the front, I told them the truth. I only had $100. (I later found out a regular exam goes for $250.) Dr. Fine had a funeral to attend that day, out of town, and even though I wasn’t even her patient, she had made time for me. That meant a lot.
I have looked and looked, and called and called - any local dentist I could find or think of, that might accept my insurance. The best I could do was an 800 number for DentiCal, and even those dentists, allegedly “low cost,” couldn’t give me better rates just for an exam, than what Dr. Fine’s office offers.
Which is this: A one-year plan for $369. This includes two general exams, two cleanings and any and all necessary x rays (which are all digital and available immediately.) What the plan also includes is 15% off all future dental work. This is the key. None of the work I am needing done is covered by DentiCal. I have looked high and low for those MediCal part B coverage options, teevee ads for monthly dental insurance and most (all?) can not attach themselves to my medical “coverage.” I went so far as to look up my old boss who in 2005, told me I ground my teeth, badly - in my sleep. All these years later I FINALLY got my own dental night guard, and that was a gift from my old friend and UFO compadre, Greg Bishop. Thanks, Greg!
That root canal by Dr. Franco held out as long as it could. In the following year I just couldn’t raise the money to get a crown put on the damn thing. So Mengele Junior merely crushed the tooth above the gum line and left the root to be covered over by my gums. What does this mean? I have to be seen by an oral surgeon who has to cut into my mouth to extract the root. (NEVER GO TO WESTERN DENTAL!)
The tooth behind the pulled tooth is in bad shape also - it has a massive filling which disintegrated and fell out in pieces, it made a slime and ran down my throat. The filling was of that amalgamated stuff. It’s still silver and not white and I am having a devil of time keeping my tongue out of the hole where the filling once was.
IT SUCKS!
I can’t go back to Dr. Franco, as I did not even pay off the good faith root canal she performed on my now disappeared tooth. I made the first appointment available with Dr. Fine - 8am, 8 July. I need $369 before that date (if I am really lucky, there will be a cancellation before hand. Not likely, and Dr. Fine is gone for vacation for part of June.)
At the urging of a good friend and fellow Fortean, I am finally making a fundraiser for myself. Not long ago, great wonderful people contributed to my campaign for “Blind, Deaf and Toothless Mr. Larry.” He is at the very least 14 years old and likely much older. His prognosis is great! He is not suffering from diabetes or hyperthyroidism. He eats like a wolf, and he constantly surprises us with his feats of daring-do - I found him climbing the stairs to the upper floor just days ago. We think he smells seafood wafting through the air from a nearby Chinese buffet and in his little addled-cat brain (kitty dementia?) believes the source of the fish smell is just “up.” (“I will find the fish! I just have to get up as high as possible…”)
In 2017 when I still had my root canalled tooth in my mouth, lots of people urged me to do a fundraiser for myself and my teeth. I was embarrassed, somehow it felt like a selfish thing to do. I can’t put it off any longer. My friend suggested I make $2,000 my goal here. I'm making it the appropriately Discordian $2,300. What will happen between now and the 8th of July? Only the shadow knows…
To anyone that donates $100 or more, I offer a copy of my still-being-put-together anthology, The Outcast Factory. It will arrive in your mailbox with a special gift hand-picked by me! (I may amend this campaign soon to also offer a membership to L.O.W.F.I., complete with official membership card and lots of other neato things.)
***
$369 One year dental plan (begins 8 July, 2018) with 1st general exam
??? Oral surgeon via Dr. Fine, to extract the errant ROOT and seal up my icky gums
$250 Estimate to have rear lower right tooth filling refilled
$900 Root canal on top front right tooth
$1000 Crown for top right front tooth
??? (Way down the road - by then I will hopefully be financially solvent and/or possess a credit card) implant for missing tooth, I can’t even fathom the cost of such things. Maybe I will become a stripper… a stripper who doesn’t strip and instead, sexily reads UFO books into a webcam. People would pay for that, right???)
***
Thanks, friend, for taking the time to read this far. I have lots of cool projects in the works - return of L.O.W.F.I. and the official website, new state-by-state Bureau Chiefs, a gargantuan Fortean History Project - for which I may take to Patreon to help fund until it’s all running smoothly. I write here and there; I will be covering Contact in the Desert for Fortean Times next. Imagine “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved” - the first collaboration between Hunter S. Thompson and illustrator Ralph Steadman, and the piece birthed gonzo journalism; now apply that to the “largest UFO convention in the world” and you can envision what I will be going for! All best wishes and many, many, endless thank you's!
Skylaire Alfvegren
she disposes of it in horror. The trouble is those born with a caul are said to have second sight - to be able to see the future. My grandfather worked as an architect - self taught. (In my childhood my mother pointed out his buildings - I remember them all being ROUND. (I later learned he also helped design the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway.) From my understanding his greatest accomplishment was envisioning what are now known as solar panels, decades before anyone seemed able to share his vision. Consequently he worked alone in his garage on this and other inventions, and at some point he exhibited and died from, mesothelioma - I don’t know the details, but it all sounded so grim, I only had fragments of facts to piece together into some kind of narrative. Arden had wanted to become a priest, and he helped haul the rocks to the top of Sunnyside in Sierra Madre, California - to be hewn into the Stations of the Cross by my Godfather, Brother Joe Caruso. Arden had been in the Navy, and later was a Merchant Marine. I really wish I knew more - my “family” is about the farthest from that - my grandparents had four children - two of whom are missing. Literally, missing for more than a decade.
It was only in the last few years, that I was told by my matter-of-fact younger uncle - by way of Facebook as I haven’t seen him since his wedding, when I was only 13 - “you inherited your grandfather’s horrible. teeth.” I did? My mother had a record number of (what I assume were mercury) fillings, drilled into her childhood adult teeth because the dentist said she had “soft teeth.” As an adult and victim of a lifetime of dental woes, I have asked about “soft teeth.”
Apparently this is not a legitimate term in dentist lingo. When my mother was really going crazy I recall she told me she had unnaturally long roots in her teeth. I had had my teeth and roots - and the way the front ones grew in - actually described as “weird” by my previous dentist, Dr. Franco. In 2016, and even though I am not a musician, the MusicCares Foundation approved me for a much-needed root canal and crown on my dead front top center tooth. As a child, I began wearing glasses at 5, I wore make-fun-able corrective shoes until around age 12; my dentist urged for braces but I knew my mother couldn’t really afford them, and boy, do I regret that choice now. Also for a time I was going to be fitted with a back brace for scoliosis but I got out of that one! When I started showing symptoms of a disease which used to kill its victims until a treatment was formulated in the 1940s, It took years for before the correct diagnosis was made. I received treatment (which I was told probably stunted my growth by two or three inches) and it went into “lifetime remission.” I am convinced I brought that illness upon myself, as I internalized pain and suffering, and still do (thank God for alcohol.) Only a few years ago did I discover that I am “a real McCoy” that my grandmother’s grandmother was part of the real McCoy clan; and that the family is prone to something once known as “McCoy Disease” usually a cluster of tumors on the adrenal glands, ocular nerves or brain stem, which would “make the McCoy hopping mad, until he just dropped dead.” (Lots of other interesting people in my bloodlines - at the same wake I discovered I was a McCoy, some relative I never knew I had whispered, “they founded the first underground newspaper for Native Americans. It was a SOCIALIST newspaper.” That’s my mother’s mother’s family. My mother’s father’s family - I have no knowledge of, apart from a report made to the L.O.W.F.I. website years ago, of first-hand UFO sightings around the DMZ during Vietnam. The report ended with “Are you the granddaughter of Arden Alfvegren? I am the unofficial genealogist of the family… let me send you 80 photos of your relatives back in Wisconsin, tell me if you see a resemblance.”
As a kid, I got routine cleanings and never had a cavity as my mother had become a health and wellness fanatic (she’d always been a Jesus hippie) while doctors were hunting for a diagnosis. At the time, my dentist strongly recommended braces. I wish I knew the details now because my teeth grew in weird, like banyan trees, and after I had my wisdom teeth removed at age 17 (one of the only acts of my mother being a mother in my teens - she took me to get them removed while I was still covered.)
***
Flash forward a goodly number of years… and then some more - and then my teeth went bad, seemingly overnight. Long story short I took care of myself and can’t even remember the first cavity I had filled; a good friend was kind enough to help me navigate two separate visits to USC Dental School, meach of my upper jaw back teeth were pulled; the first one disintegrated into a million little pieces. They wouldn’t let me keep the second tooth as a souvenir (my third tooth, I got to keep and mailed it to a friend across the pond.) At the time I had no insurance, not even MediCal. In 2015/16, I reached out to MusiCares, the charitable arm of the Musician’s Union, who had helped me out in the past. They have helped me (me, not a musician, but a music journalist) and countless others (actual musicians!) with all sorts of things, rehab for drugs and alcohol and emergency health and dental issues. The trick with that organization is to be psychic, try to arrange your health crisis near to the end of the fiscal year – because if they don’t spend all they have in their coffers, they get less funding the next go-round.
Wielding a fake ID three years before I could legally drink (thank you, MacArthur Park!), the music editor at the LA Weekly sauntered up to me and said “I hear you’re a great writer. Give me 400 words by Monday morning, and if it’s shit I won’t run it.” Well, he ran my review of the German electronic duo Cluster – and lots more over the course of years. (12 years after that concert, one half of the duo, Herr Rodelius – quoted the last lines of my own review back to me, word-for-word.)
I was idealistic then; I thought all my interactions with editors would run so smoothly. Ha. I couldn’t have been more ignorant. My wonderful editor was eventually sacked and replaced with a bouncy airhead from Teen People whose greatest ambition in life was to interview Beck. She never gave me one assignment, always complaining that I pitched her “old man’s music.”
I have been told I am an orphan; I guess it’s true. I only met my biological father last year – and that was under duress because his sister has been the executor of his “estate” for decades, and when I tracked her down, she was adamant that meeting me would throw Alan over the cliff, that he was living in a board and care that was the last house on the block, due to his (apparently untreated) schizophrenia. She showed me pictures of my two half brothers in Chicago, but wouldn’t tell me their names. She lied and said I had no half-brother with a Japanese mother, which my mother had been insistent upon when I was little. His name she said was marc Kimora. Only after Alan had to undergo emergency surgery did this aunt of mine (Alan calls her a demon), give me his contact information because he needed a ride back from the hospital. Who drove him there? My Japanese half-brother, who I discovered lives less than a 5 minute drive from my house. (I still haven’t made contact with him but I did pick up an Obamaphone for Alan so that he can contact his lawyer, about wrestling away from the “demon,” his own military pension.)
My life as it stands is exploding with chronic pain. In the last few months, my mouth has been giving me Hell. Literally, Hell. I have been living with some kind of serious tooth infection for what seems like years now. Last year I tripped and smashed my face up, broke my nose and nearly knocked out my other top front tooth (next to the “weird” one with the crazy roots.) I went again to another urgent care - where I was told the damn thing could just fall out at any moment. I called the dental school they referred me to - UCLA - who told me they couldn’t help me in any way except by pulling it out. I was desperate for a second opinion, and took to social media. I called, after hours, Dr. Rachel Fine out of Glendale, who was kind enough to squeeze me in the next morning, as it was an emergency. I was very nervous. This is not West Virginia. Having a missing front tooth would add nothing but another negative burden, for me, a native and current resident of Los Angeles, where everyone is fit and stylish and beautiful and looking as though they stepped, airbrushed, from the pages of a fashion magazine (or so the logic goes.)
The foyer of Dr. Fine’s office really made me feel at home. A mid-century modern light fixture hung invitingly, from the ceiling. A cart offered tea and coffee and even cappuccino. The table version of Ms. Pacman and various black and white art prints of the area in a previous life, hung along the walls. I was convinced this was my new dentist.
She took x rays - and told me that I would need a root canal on that now-loose front tooth. (A lot of pain comes from this tooth and weird cold patches and general ickyness.) If I just stopped being a klutz and left my mouth alone, some kind of healing process would take place in the following month or so, that my mouth would work itself out in terms of just keeping my tooth anchored in my mouth. Whew. I did not know what this visit would or should cost but when I made it to the front, I told them the truth. I only had $100. (I later found out a regular exam goes for $250.) Dr. Fine had a funeral to attend that day, out of town, and even though I wasn’t even her patient, she had made time for me. That meant a lot.
I have looked and looked, and called and called - any local dentist I could find or think of, that might accept my insurance. The best I could do was an 800 number for DentiCal, and even those dentists, allegedly “low cost,” couldn’t give me better rates just for an exam, than what Dr. Fine’s office offers.
Which is this: A one-year plan for $369. This includes two general exams, two cleanings and any and all necessary x rays (which are all digital and available immediately.) What the plan also includes is 15% off all future dental work. This is the key. None of the work I am needing done is covered by DentiCal. I have looked high and low for those MediCal part B coverage options, teevee ads for monthly dental insurance and most (all?) can not attach themselves to my medical “coverage.” I went so far as to look up my old boss who in 2005, told me I ground my teeth, badly - in my sleep. All these years later I FINALLY got my own dental night guard, and that was a gift from my old friend and UFO compadre, Greg Bishop. Thanks, Greg!
That root canal by Dr. Franco held out as long as it could. In the following year I just couldn’t raise the money to get a crown put on the damn thing. So Mengele Junior merely crushed the tooth above the gum line and left the root to be covered over by my gums. What does this mean? I have to be seen by an oral surgeon who has to cut into my mouth to extract the root. (NEVER GO TO WESTERN DENTAL!)
The tooth behind the pulled tooth is in bad shape also - it has a massive filling which disintegrated and fell out in pieces, it made a slime and ran down my throat. The filling was of that amalgamated stuff. It’s still silver and not white and I am having a devil of time keeping my tongue out of the hole where the filling once was.
IT SUCKS!
I can’t go back to Dr. Franco, as I did not even pay off the good faith root canal she performed on my now disappeared tooth. I made the first appointment available with Dr. Fine - 8am, 8 July. I need $369 before that date (if I am really lucky, there will be a cancellation before hand. Not likely, and Dr. Fine is gone for vacation for part of June.)
At the urging of a good friend and fellow Fortean, I am finally making a fundraiser for myself. Not long ago, great wonderful people contributed to my campaign for “Blind, Deaf and Toothless Mr. Larry.” He is at the very least 14 years old and likely much older. His prognosis is great! He is not suffering from diabetes or hyperthyroidism. He eats like a wolf, and he constantly surprises us with his feats of daring-do - I found him climbing the stairs to the upper floor just days ago. We think he smells seafood wafting through the air from a nearby Chinese buffet and in his little addled-cat brain (kitty dementia?) believes the source of the fish smell is just “up.” (“I will find the fish! I just have to get up as high as possible…”)
In 2017 when I still had my root canalled tooth in my mouth, lots of people urged me to do a fundraiser for myself and my teeth. I was embarrassed, somehow it felt like a selfish thing to do. I can’t put it off any longer. My friend suggested I make $2,000 my goal here. I'm making it the appropriately Discordian $2,300. What will happen between now and the 8th of July? Only the shadow knows…
To anyone that donates $100 or more, I offer a copy of my still-being-put-together anthology, The Outcast Factory. It will arrive in your mailbox with a special gift hand-picked by me! (I may amend this campaign soon to also offer a membership to L.O.W.F.I., complete with official membership card and lots of other neato things.)
***
$369 One year dental plan (begins 8 July, 2018) with 1st general exam
??? Oral surgeon via Dr. Fine, to extract the errant ROOT and seal up my icky gums
$250 Estimate to have rear lower right tooth filling refilled
$900 Root canal on top front right tooth
$1000 Crown for top right front tooth
??? (Way down the road - by then I will hopefully be financially solvent and/or possess a credit card) implant for missing tooth, I can’t even fathom the cost of such things. Maybe I will become a stripper… a stripper who doesn’t strip and instead, sexily reads UFO books into a webcam. People would pay for that, right???)
***
Thanks, friend, for taking the time to read this far. I have lots of cool projects in the works - return of L.O.W.F.I. and the official website, new state-by-state Bureau Chiefs, a gargantuan Fortean History Project - for which I may take to Patreon to help fund until it’s all running smoothly. I write here and there; I will be covering Contact in the Desert for Fortean Times next. Imagine “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved” - the first collaboration between Hunter S. Thompson and illustrator Ralph Steadman, and the piece birthed gonzo journalism; now apply that to the “largest UFO convention in the world” and you can envision what I will be going for! All best wishes and many, many, endless thank you's!
Skylaire Alfvegren
Organizer
Skylaire Alfvegren
Organizer
Burbank, CA