Human Touch

I’ve seen things now and then about the healing and stress-reducing power of touch: how healthcare providers and caretakers can do a surprising amount of good for the patient by even such small things as putting their hand on a patient’s shoulder, or touching them briefly on the upper arm. With one of my c-sections, there was some sort of trainee (EMT?) sitting in, and she offered to let me hold her hand while I was getting the epidural, and it helped so much, and I still remember it a quarter-century later. And here’s the situation I’m going to apply that paragraph to: I had a very stressful dentist appointment yesterday. I was getting two crowns, and I was getting them with a new dentist, because our old dentist sold the practice between one of my appointments and the next. I had many, many anxieties. One was that I would barf when they used that dental goop to make impressions of the teeth; the dental assistant scolds me that I shouldn’t be thinking of it or planning for it, but…