Some happy news from our Brookline office, and honestly, this one feels personal.
We now have nitrous oxide at PHS - Pro-Nox, if you want the brand name. It's a blend of nitrous oxide and oxygen that you control yourself. You breathe it when you need it, it takes the edge off pain and anxiety within moments, and it's out of your system just as fast. No needles, no grogginess, no lingering fog. We're using it for IUD insertions, Botox for high-tone pelvic floor, and other procedures - the moments that can feel scary even when you're in the gentlest hands.
If you've been following along here, you know why this matters to me. So many of the people who find their way to my office have already been through it. Pain that got dismissed. Told it was "just bad cramps." Told everything looks normal. So many dread the very procedures that are supposed to help them. I am not willing to add to that suffering. Helping someone feel safe and comfortable during their care is just good medicine, period.
And there's more to it, for me.
My dad knew pain from the inside. He lived with chronic pain for over 50 years - IBS that often left him debilitated - and he never stopped learning about it. He read the journal articles. He went to Washington to advocate for funding. In his late 80s, he took a course on living with chronic pain and practiced mindfulness meditation, and he kept one saved on his phone for the unbearable days. He was a physicist, a jazz saxophonist, a lifelong learner right up until the end.
One of the most meaningful letters he ever sent me said:
"You are providing a service that is essentially unavailable to women and men. To mitigate pain is one of the noblest endeavors in life."
I have read that letter so many times since he died. This month, when I stood next to our new machine, I finally knew what it was for.
So I am dedicating it to both of my beloved parents - in memory of my dad, who taught me that easing pain is some of the noblest work a person can do, and in honor of my mom, who is still very much with us. She walked beside my dad through every one of those years with grace and humor and so much love - and she taught me what it looks like to love someone through their pain.
I get a little choked up thinking about it, and I think that's okay.
Muscle. Tissue. Hormones. And now, comfort. It's all connected.
