Cannon Fodder

Shooting a person from a cannon is a transgression of the natural order, and therein lies the prurient excitement, a spectacle for a circus. A cannon is an armament and ballistics are supposed to do damage to an enemy. Unless you were to shoot my mother behind the enemy line to demoralize your adversaries, shooting people out of cannons would only do damage to the human cannon balls themselves.

And so it was on that fateful day in 1979 when the kids from the circus were demonstrating to me how safe it was to be shot out of their cannon into the safety net. Ignoring the anarchy of the concept, I decided it was something that had to be done. I slid down the barrel feet first until I struck wood. "Tense up and keep stiff", yelled a lanky acrobat, as he pulled the lever, releasing the coiled mechanism that sent me skyward.

It was the proverbial eternity, being flung upwards as if in slow motion. I remember losing my balance but over-corrected by frantically paddling the air. With limbs flailing I managed to land on the edge of the net but one foot hit the ground. There was a major thump as my ankle went under. I rolled off and joined by right foot on the turf, moaning and pounding the earth with my fists to dull the pain.

"You've got yourself a pretty good sprain there", said doctor O'Brien (not his real name) as he wrapped the seriously swollen ankle in a white gauze bandage.

I hip-hopped down the road on my new crutches like some rudimentary cyborg, but the pressure on my foot was mounting, and the symptoms did not improve in the days that followed. I decided to get a second
opinion.

Dr. White (not his real name) was an intern at the Box Hill Hospital and appeared appropriately concerned at the state of my right ankle. And then, in a failed attempt to cheer me up, he said, "I'll just get the manual and find out what we do in situations like this". What they did was plaster.

The sculptured cast was super and everybody took turns writing graffiti on it, but inside my foot still throbbed. All was not well.

Dr. Frank (not his real name) was the best in the field, or so I was told. He ran his fingers expertly over the injured ankle. "It's a forth degree rupture", he said. "If left to heal by itself there is a risk that it will mend itself incorrectly leaving you with a permanent limp. (Not a gammy foot! I could end up back at the circus

sooner than I thought) "It would be best if we operated and sewed the ligament back together".

I now had three different opinions and three different remedies. It became apparent that each doctor did whatever it was that he did: G.P.'s bandaged, interns plastered and surgeons operated - so much for

objectivity.

All that being as it was, I decided on surgery because I was in awe of the great white specialist, but more out of the fear he had put in me regarding the limp.

Two weeks after the operation the hospital physiotherapist, Adriana Taylor (not her real name) was advising me it was time to get up and stand on my one good foot. I obediently hoped off the bed. I had not been out of bed for two weeks so my limbs were weak. My good leg crumpled beneath me causing my recently repaired right foot to hit the floor. I fell down and blood ran out from the heel gap in my plaster.

After this fine piece of work Adriana called for the doctor. I wish she had waited and called a different one. Doctor Brad (not his real name) arrived and, incredibly, decided that since I was due to have the plaster off in five days, nothing should be done until then!

At the appointed time the nurse orbitally sawed the plaster from my leg. The mock relief that she didn't continue on through the limb did not lessen the shock at the gory mess that was revealed on removal of the

plaster. The stitches of the operation had either broken or stretched. Removal of the congealed blood revealed a haematoma, a blood clot the size of a golf ball. The clot called "mistake" was removed by the clot called Dr Brad, who caused it, leaving a gaping hole in my foot. I was to spend a further four weeks in hospital while the wound slowly healed.

All this left me with a weak foot resulting in ten years of occasional sprains. Then there occurred another problem: I suffered a sub-luxation. This is where a ligament pops out of its groove in the foot.  It was not,

however, the same ligament that was injured previously.

Dr. Sexton, (not his real name), an orthopaedic surgeon, was advising that I required an operation to shorten the offending ligament. I asked whether it was just a coincidence that the problem had occurred on the

same foot as my previous operation. He said that he couldn't be sure. "But wasn't it probable?"  He thought it would be wrong to speculate.

Frustrated, I asked where the problem ligament started and where it ended. It ended in the area where the last operation had occurred. I thought I'd try again; "Wouldn't this fact, together with the general dysfunction of the right foot, be a fair basis for an assumption that the present problem had emanated from the last injury and the subsequent operation". No luck.

Dr. Sexton then dropped an unexpected admission, "If you were to come in now with the last problem, the forth degree rupture, we would not operate".

Let me get this right, the operation I had, and with it the subsequent damage, was unnecessary, but you are now advising that this new problem needs an operation?

"Yes"

And you don't think that this new problem has anything to do with the original operation.

"Can't say"

My dear doctor, let me describe a possible scenario that is concerning me. The first operation, which you tell me was unnecessary, caused the current problem for which, under current medical science, you are telling me an operation is necessary. In two years time you decide that, in retrospect, the second operation was also unnecessary, but not before it has further unbalanced my foot to the point where there is now a third problem that will of course need an operation, and so on.

I was trying to explain to him, that unlike previous customers, I was not interested in becoming a patchwork doll.

But try as I might, I could not break him out of his surgical myopia: "I can't predict what will happen in the future but if we don't operate now you will have problems in the future", he said.

I'd had enough.

"What do you call surgery that is unnecessary?"

What?

"Mutilation", I uttered the dread word in a steely tone, directing the accusation with clinical precision.

He let out a scoffing half laugh. He could not entertain the terrible truth so he called me an entertainer.

"You're a real card, aren't you?"

Not since my days in the circus, but you sir are a body snatcher!

I never had the mutilation but chose to continue with physiotherapy. Five years have passed and I am happy to report that my foot is doing fine. At the end of the day I don't know what is worse, being shot out of a cannon or becoming cannon fodder for the medical fraternity.

Killed with a Smile

I was eating a carrot when I crunched on something with an even greater density than the culinary orange root. Instinct made me spit it out but not before swallowing some. I found a piece of amalgam filling in
the chewed refuse giving rise to a suspicion that another piece, together with its constituent mercury, had been swallowed. This may explain my occasional jump to the left when walking down Fitzroy street, where I am lucky to live (if it were any other street they would think it strange!).

I only surmise this after seeing a documentary on lead poisoning in pre-war Tokyo; the cats were nervously leaping to the left and right while trying to make their way along the path. I also know of the debate in Australia, involving two schools of thought, on the issue of amalgam dental fillings. The up-side of all this is that I had just accidentally got rid of one, albeit half down my gob.

A smartly dressed lady at a tram stop in South Yarra recommended her dentist; she assured me that he was "absolutely marvelous". I decided to pay him a visit.

Dr. Jack Moore (not his real name) poured into the waiting room and filled it up with his effusive personality; he began to swim around in this primordial sludge, a regular smiling crocodile.

I was ushered into a comfortable consulting room where Jack proceeded to tell me of his considerable professionalism: he didn't do things by halves, he would conduct a thorough investigation of all of my dental requirements. "Sounds okay to me", "I said. He proceeded to do an x-ray of the problem tooth, but then shoved a lump of plasticine in my mouth and began to make a mould of my teeth from which he would make a cast. I was then taken up the hall to another x-ray room with a large machine that did the full smile: my head was steadied on a chin holder, as in optometry, and the camera ran on rails around my face, filming teeth.

I thought all this was a bit of overkill but liked the wizbangery, and was sold on the "true professional" speech; the tests seemed like proof of that. He filled the problem tooth with a non-lead substance as I had requested (I was afraid that another lead filling would add a jump to the right, taking me perilously close to "doing The Time Warp", an embarrassing piece of choreography that not even the denizens of Fitzroy street would tolerate).

The girl at the front desk handed me the bill: I read down the long list of unnecessary services until I got to the total which read, "$1,200.00". What is it with people? Have I been drugged and had "CHUMP" subcutaneously tattooed on my forehead, only read by x-ray machines? Gobsmacked, I sat down on one of the waiting room chairs to reflect.

It was lunch time and I was hungry, and feeling powerless in the face of this abuse of medical authority. I got to wondering what the Mahatma would do in a situation like this. I soon found myself eating the bill, in an act of passive resistance. On seeing me do this, the receptionist fled through the door to the consulting room, instantly producing Dr. Jack.

He asked if I was alright.

"Yes thanks; got a bit hungry so I'm eating your bill". I said, chomping into it like a goat.
There was a long pause as he stood there wondering what to do next. Eventually, feeling that we were at an impasse, I jumped up and said that I had to go. With this I hurried out the door leaving the scoundrel nailed to the floor.

The man was either thick or bloody minded as in the next day's mail came another bill and a letter stating that he had revised the charges and had decided to reduce the bill by half. It now stood at six hundred dollars.

Granted, I had made some progress but we were working down from a high peak. And the big question was, why had he reduced it? I hadn't complained about the bill, I merely ate it. He obviously had a guilty conscience and sensed trouble; he was trying to buy his release but still wanted the proceeds of his crime. I was determined that he would not get off so easy.

On a ring-a-round of local dental surgeries I discovered that the going rate for the work in question was about $150. I wrote a cheque for this amount and mailed it to the man with the chiselled teeth, with a letter stating that, without prejudice to my legal rights, he may accept this amount in full and final payment for his work.

I heard nothing more from him and his little scam which I have come to know is called "percentage professionalism". The practice generally involves the professional charging targeted patients, say, triple the normal fee, and then negotiating back from there. It is known that only about 50% will complain, and only 25% of these will insist on a return to the market rate, leaving the other 25% happy with some discount on the original. The net result is a substantial increase in over-all fees.

My next dentist requested the file and, much to my delight, I also got the x-ray with the big skeletal smile. Sometimes I get it out and gaze at it reflectively, "Alas, poor Henry”!