LA sports arena hosts health clinic of last resort

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-08-14 10:29

"A MIRACLE"

Ayana Kleckner, 15, was chipper despite spending the night in line outside to get one of the 1,500 appointments available on Tuesday. She managed only two hours of sleep in a sleeping bag on the cold sidewalk.

Ayana saw her mother Elon Kleckner have a painful abscessed tooth removed during surgery in a dental chair. The high-school student was cheerfully eating an apple after her first teeth cleaning in five years.

"This is a miracle, but people shouldn't have to sleep on the street to get medical care," Ayana said while waiting for an eye exam. "It was adventurous, if you could put it that way, but I don't think I should have to go through that to make sure I'm healthy."

Elon Kleckner, who declined to give her age, said she had lost her sales job several months ago but did not have medical insurance even when she was working and had not been to a doctor in years.

"If everybody in this country were in the situation my daughter and I are in, they would have a whole different view of (the healthcare debate)," Kleckner said, speaking through a sore mouth stuffed with cotton.

On the other side of the hall, 83-year-old Ethel Nabors, who has been without teeth for some five years, had just been told after a nine-hour wait that the clinic could not provide her with a new set of false teeth.

But Nabors shrugged off the bad luck as she sat in an old Lakers chair to see if a volunteer could realign her dentures, which she had brought with her in a paper sack.

"I didn't live this long by fretting about everything," she said. "I pray for patience. I've made it this far. If it's meant for me to have a new pair of teeth then I'll get them one way or the other."

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