

The agony of feeling no pain - akandiah
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18713585

======
drostie
I had read this story a couple years back and the way Steven Pete remembers
Child Protective Services is a bit different from how his mum remembers it:

    
    
        > Once, CPS told the Petes they wanted to remove Steven, then a toddler,
        > for two months of observation at a Seattle hospital.
        >
        > "I said to them, 'OK, but will somebody be watching him 24 hours a
        > day?' They said, 'Oh yes.' "
        >
        > In the hospital, "He broke his foot, and they didn't discover it until
        > a day and half later. They had no idea when or how it happened. Child
        > Services said they realized what we were going through. They worked
        > with us on it. They were really nice."
    

There's other stuff -- another sufferer and a lot more details -- in the
article I'd read:
[http://tdn.com/lifestyles/article_e230b156-b22e-11df-93d9-00...](http://tdn.com/lifestyles/article_e230b156-b22e-11df-93d9-001cc4c002e0.html)

Anyway, this community, I think, cares a lot about pushing yourself to
succeed, but knows the price of burnout that can be associated with that.
These people just have this physically: rather than some sort of abstract
'laziness' we normally have 'pain' which slows us down, and while pushing past
a little pain is usually good -- it gets you running and developing muscle --
there is serious pain which tells you 'something is wrong, you're about to
injure yourself' which you fortunately can't easily push past. Well, these
guys can, and it leads to real injury. There's a deep connection here
somewhere between the mental fatigue and physical fatigues.

------
jacobr
There is a concentration of people with "Norrbottnian congenital insensitivity
to pain" in Norrbotten in northern Sweden:
[http://www.slideshare.net/gejanmin/20090801-hsan-
presentatio...](http://www.slideshare.net/gejanmin/20090801-hsan-presentation)

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freehunter
> _"If you're not in pain then you have no reason to be on any type of
> assistance."_

So that's the qualifier for having a debilitating disability? Not medical
bills, not the cost of equipment and care, but _pain_? Hell, I'm in pain all
the time. Where's my check?

You'd think the qualifier for disability assistance would be having a
disability that costs you money and keeps you from earning money. Pain is not
automatically a disability, and lack of pain is not automatically the lack of
a disability.

------
swombat
Sad that the article didn't ask/answer one essential, obvious question: what
about emotional pain?

From the article, I would guess that he feels it. But many studies have shown
that emotional pain (e.g. the pain of losing a loved one) produces
physiological reactions similar to physical pain. Does he feel emotional pain?
Did he feel that ache and sinking feeling in the chest when his brother took
his life? How did he feel it? How would he describe it?

~~~
nandemo
There was an AMA thread on Reddit from a girl who couldn't feel physical pain.
I can't find the link with (maybe she deleted it?) but I recall she did feel
emotional pain.

~~~
mkl
Was it this one?
[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9x8qc/i_am_unable_to_f...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9x8qc/i_am_unable_to_feel_pain_hot_or_cold_i_have_cipa/?sort=hot)

I also found one by a guy:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/e8g5e/ama_a_guy_that_f...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/e8g5e/ama_a_guy_that_feels_no_physical_pain_due_to_cipa/)

------
jlgreco
His concern about appendicitis is rather interesting. I wonder if preemptively
removing it is something that has been considered. They do that with a keyhole
operation these days if I recall correctly, so accidental injury during
recovery would probably be fairly minimal.

------
gwern
Curiously enough, there's still other conditions relating to pain. My own
favorite obscure disorder is 'pain asymbolia': where you feel pain and know
something bad is happening, but it's not _painful_. As far as I've been able
to find out, it's not like this (or other nerve deadening problems like
diabetes or leprosy) in apparently causing no serious injuries or self-
injuries.

Relevant: <http://lesswrong.com/lw/51f/guilt_another_gift_nobody_wants/>

------
olalonde
As a pain sensitive human, I think the closest approximation I can come up
with of this condition is being very very drunk. If I recall correctly, one of
the most common cause of death by hypothermia is alcohol. It's also much
easier to get injured badly when you are drunk due to decreased pain
sensitivity (complemented by decreased judgement). And even then, I guess this
does not even come close to what this man must have been living with.

~~~
archangel_one
Or just being given some serious painkillers.

I had my wisdom teeth out a year or so ago, and after that I chewed big holes
in my lip and tongue because I couldn't feel that I was biting on them. I
imagine that's more or less what happens to them, all over their body, all the
time.

~~~
philbarr
Yep. Had knee surgery recently and they gave me something that basically
turned off the nerves in my leg. The brace they put on it afterwards trapped
the skin near my backside and caused a huge welt which I couldn't feel.

My God it hurt next day though.

EDIT: Thinking about it - I actually _saw_ that the skin was trapped but
didn't do anything about it because I couldn't feel it. Even though I knew I
was on painkillers. It must be difficult to learn to respond to possible
dangers without the pain motivator.

------
haberman
It's hard for me to understand how a person could have a sense of touch but
not feel pain. It seems like touch is just a continuum where pain is where it
crosses over into being unpleasant. I've always been similarly confused about
how painkillers work. Pain must somehow be an actually different thing than
regular touch, but I don't get how this can be.

~~~
fghh45sdfhr3
Well then read some medical books!

Sorry about the snarky response, but when a comment like this is at the top, I
can't believe so many people have voted up what is basically _F~cking Magnets,
How Do They Work?_

~~~
haberman
Calm down, my comment was at 1 (now 0) because newly-posted comments are
slightly favored for a little while before falling down the page to be in pure
score order.

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dag11
That was an interesting read, but I don't really see what it has to do with
technology or business.

~~~
corwinstephen
Hacker news guidelines:

"If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that
gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

~~~
ta12121
There's even been House episodes about this condition. It's not exactly
obscure.

