To the Editor.— Stewart smiled during the spinal tap that lasted only moments. Kneeling down close, I whispered that I was proud of him, and a great little smile lit the room. It had not been that long since this procedure had my 4-year-old son surrounded by the strong arms of nurses in the great lock and shout down, straight from the eighteenth century. Somewhere in the weeks that followed our diagnosis of acute lymphocytic leukemia, somewhere lost in that downpour of emotions and medical forms, my wife and I agreed to enroll Stewart in a study that would compare two different sedation drugs and their effects during lumbar punctures and bone marrow tests.