Everything is going well. Our patient has gotten over her major initial anxiety. Her Dad voluntarily left the room at the beginning of the appointment so he’s not transferring anxiety to her. Her breathing is regular…and there’s a good flow through the nitrous/oxygen line.

The canals have all been instrumented, I’m getting ready for obturation, and then a thought surfaces briefly and then sinks away at the back of my mind, “She seems pretty relaxed now…maybe even dozy. I wonder if I should turn the nitrous down a bit. But she really likes this level…but we’re almost done…yeah but she’s been doing so well at this level…Naw, we’re almost done. I’ll turn it off soon.”

So I go back to doing my thing.

Her left hand comes up.

“You want me to turn it down?” I ask.

“Mmmhmm,” she murmurs.

“Ok, I’m turning it down a bit. We need to give it a couple of…”

“Mmmhmm! MMMHMM…”

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I couldn’t make it into work today because of the icy roads. I did try, but ended up going so slow that it was painful and still dangerous. Then once I got to a 5 car pile up at the bottom of a hill I turned around and came back.

I’m going out to the garage now to fix up the snow blower.

Now that the leaves are off the trees, from the street we can see the rock walls that the landscapers placed in the front.