Posted 9:47 AM by Paul
Into the Care of Others

We took Alice to the dentists today. Not our usual dentists next to the station but one a few miles away that specialises in extractions under sedation. They have an anaethetist on hand. So it's perectly safe. But that's not what goes through your head. Stories of kids dieing due to a some terrible mistake in the dosage or a hyper allergic reaction circulate in the deepest recesses of your subconscious. Then they swim into your conscious and you start thinking the unthinkable. What if...? Heather had been tense for a couple of days. I knew was going on in her head.

So we took a taxi down to the surgery in brilliant spring sunshine. Alice was was fine and Heather held her hand as she slipped under as the drugs quickly took effect. She looked utterly helpless in the dentist's chair and the nurse slipped what looked like a pair of wrap-around shades around her eyes. To help her relax I suppose.

The anaesthetist, a short friendly man of Middle Eastern appearance asked us to wait outside which we did without comment or complaint but we both felt uneasy. We didn't want to leave her. We were entrusting her to the care of others. From outside the door we could hear the drilling, but more stressfully the bleeping of a monitor. It reminded me of the torturous (more for Heather than me - obviously) minutes before she we was born and her heartbeat kept dissapearing from the ECG machine. Briefly I thought of Dr. Joan Francisco the gynocologist who delivered her and a few weeks later was murdered by an obsessional former boyfriend.

Then the door opened and Alice was led to us by the anaesthetist. She was back. Babbling incoherently at first and then asking when she would be able to walk properly. She insisted on getting up and asking me to help her walk. She hated not being in control. In the taxi home she insisted in reciting the alphabet to prove to us and herself that she was OK.

Alice will be 10 in October. More and more we will be entrusting her to the care of others and of course the care of herself. But today it was just so good to have her at home, laying on the sofa, watching Cartoon Network. Being a kid