Stab and be Stabbed; there is no question.

Well, there was no avoiding it so I had to put my brave face on.
We delivered anesthesia to one another last Friday in clinic.  My partner was Karlie Weeks.
What a darling girl.  She is so great.  It's impossible to be tense around her. 
And it turns out there was really no reason to be tense anyway.  Things went swimmingly!
(Who came up with that expression anyway? It makes no sense).
I decided that Karlie should give me the 4 injections first...a Posterior Superior Alveolar Nerve Block, a Middle Superior Alveolar Nerve Block, a Greater Palatine Nerve Block, and a Nasopalatine Nerve Block, in that order.
We practiced with long q-tips first to make sure we had our angles correct.  Professor Costley was our advisor for this lab.  I was pretty excited about that.  She is wonderful.
Karlie set the bar high by giving me 4 flawless injections.  Yay Karlie!  When I get injections, I find it comforting to distract myself by humming or pinching my leg.  I chose humming during the palatal injections and I think I made a bit of a fool out of myself.  Oh well...I was less tense because of it.  Palatal shots aren't very fun by nature, but she did a good job.
Next, I was up.  Professor Costley came to watch my angles as I practiced.  She said I was positioning my "needle" perfectly so I told Karlie that it was safe to expect perfection.  ;)   Alas, I let her down just a bit during the deliverance of the MSA.  My site of penetration was a little far mesial and I had to reinsert my needle at the long axis of the 2nd premolar.  She told me she hadnt felt either of the injections that I had delivered up to that point.  Yay!  Like I stated before, palatal injections arent fun by nature, but she was a trooper and handled it better than I probably handled hers.  I felt a little sheepish for not being silent during her experience.  Next time, I will be better.

We got through it though!   We never pinched a vessel and our areas were beginning to feel properly anesthetized.  Yay for us!  It was a good day...I learned alot, built alot of confidence, and I don't expect to feel further anxiety at the prospect of giving maxillary injections.  We'll see how I feel about the IA next week.