The
night before she played Gabriela Sabatini in the
final of the Family Circle Cup in
Hilton Head, South Carolina, Martina Navratilova
bit into a carrot and lost her front tooth. In a
panic, Navratilova did the only thing she could
do – she called Dr. Michael C. Iott in New
York City.
“The
last plane leaving LaGuardia was at 8:10 P.M. I
had 25 minutes to get to the airport,” Iott
recalls. “The plane flew into Atlanta and
I had to book a charter flight into Hilton Head.
There was a big storm that night and I didn’t
get in until 2 A.M. Then I had to rent an office.
I was working on Martina by 10 A.M.
“Unfortunately
I couldn’t numb her up for the procedure –
nothing that could possibly affect her playing.
So she just went for it. I was finished in time
for her to have a one-hour practice session before
the final.” (Navratilova then beat Sabatini
in three sets.)
Iott first met Navratilova when both were on ski
holidays in Aspen, Colorado. He clearly revels in
being part of Team Navratilova, the extended family
that forms the cornerstone of Martina’s personal
and professional lives. “I get Martina’s
schedules [sent to me] by fax,” says Iott,
“I have to know her TV schedules, practice
schedules, even her diet schedules. All those raw
nuts and veggies she eats put a lot of stress on
her teeth. I have to be aware of these things.”
Iott says that most of Martina’s dental problems
date back to her early years in Czechoslovakia.
“Eastern European countries are known for
their big fillings, and their dental work isn’t
too good,” he points out. “Right now
we’re in the process of taking out all those
fillings, Martina doesn’t care how long it
takes: she wants everything right.”
“Martina
takes an active interest in her teeth and everybody
else’s teeth. [Her younger sister, Jana, it
turns out, is a dental student in West Germany.]
She’s an excellent patient.”
Not to mention a fussy one. “She doesn’t
want silver fillings in her teeth because of the
mercury in it, so we have to use porcelain instead,”
he says. “And I can’t give her any of
the usual anesthesias, her pulse, circulation and
heart rate would react within 30 seconds. We have
to use special things that have less additives.
Her body is so finely tuned that one injection is
good for five hours.”
Of
course, even Iott can’t be there all the time.
So when Martina arrived one late October morning,
just prior to the taping of “Late Night with
David Letterman,” Iott could only complete
a portion of the job. That’s when he had to
call in colleague Miriam Robbins, just four months
out of residency, to finish up.
“Michael
came up to me and said, 'I need a favor. I need
you to put some temporaries [fillings] in for a
patient.'”
“I
said, ‘Fine, how many?’”
“He
said, ‘Six,’ but he didn’t tell
me who it was. Then he and Martina walked in. I
nearly fell over.”
“She
said, ‘Are you any good?’”
“I
said, ‘Michael has trusted me to work on you.’”
“‘It’s
not because you’re a woman,’ she said,
‘It’s because you look too young to
be a dentist.’”
Everything went smoothly, but the experience left
dentist, not patient, a little worse for wear. “By
the time I got to the next patent I was shaking
for an hour,“ Robbins recalls. “I’m
sure she [Martina] thought I was an alcoholic.”
-
Dan Rosenbaum
