6 ms·

The agony of feeling no pain

80 points by akandiah 14y ago

losethos 14y ago
Humiliation is painful. If your identity is "being smart", it might be pryed from your clenched fists. Once in a while, God makes me worse than I am. Mostly, He makes me better than I am. Being worse than you are is hard to bare, until you find the numb zone. Fury is often present. If a game seems rigged, losing is not as upsetting. God says... shall be blown, and they shall come which were ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and the outcasts in the land of Egypt, and shall worship the LORD in the holy mount at Jerusalem. 28:1 Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim, whose glorious beauty is a fading flower, which are on the head of the fat valleys of them that are overcome with wine! 28:2 Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one, which as a tempest of hail and a destroying storm, as a flood of mighty waters overflowing, shall cast down to the earth with the hand. 28:3 The crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim, shall be trodden under feet: 28:4 And the glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley, shall be a fading flower, and as the hasty fruit before the summer; which when he that looketh upon it seeth, while it is yet in his hand he eateth it up.
dag11 14y ago
That was an interesting read, but I don't really see what it has to do with technology or business.
- corwinstephen 14y ago
  Hacker news guidelines: "If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
  - ta12121 14y ago
    There's even been House episodes about this condition. It's not exactly obscure.
jacobr 14y ago
There is a concentration of people with "Norrbottnian congenital insensitivity to pain" in Norrbotten in northern Sweden: http://www.slideshare.net/gejanmin/20090801-hsan-presentation http://www.slideshare.net/gejanmin/20090801-hsan-presentatio...
jlgreco 14y ago
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.
olalonde 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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 14y ago
    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.
drostie 14y ago
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-93d9-001cc4c002e0.html http://tdn.com/lifestyles/article_e230b156-b22e-11df-93d9-00... 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.
swombat 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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 14y ago
    Was it this one? http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9x8qc/i_am_unable_to_feel_pain_hot_or_cold_i_have_cipa/?sort=hot http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9x8qc/i_am_unable_to_f... I also found one by a guy: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/e8g5e/ama_a_guy_that_feels_no_physical_pain_due_to_cipa/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/e8g5e/ama_a_guy_that_f...
- fghh45sdfhr3 14y ago
  He speculates his brother committed suicide because of this condition, so I'm pretty sure emotional pain is there. Probably also why pain killers don't help with feeling sad.
nmutua 14y ago
must be really horrible agony. cant imagine how life would be without pain. we always complain about our small pains. this should encourage us to brace ourselves and only complain if the hurt is serious. same with painkillers. so many people take pills immediately when they feel something. lets be a lil bit tougher and think about what it would be like to feel no pain at all. pain is healthy (most of the time)
freehunter 14y ago
>"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.
haberman 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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 14y ago
    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.
gwern 14y ago
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/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/51f/guilt_another_gift_nobody_wants/

80 points by akandiah 14y ago

Humiliation is painful. If your identity is "being smart", it might be pryed from your clenched fists. Once in a while, God makes me worse than I am. Mostly, He makes me better than I am. Being worse than you are is hard to bare, until you find the numb zone. Fury is often present. If a game seems rigged, losing is not as upsetting. God says... shall be blown, and they shall come which were ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and the outcasts in the land of Egypt, and shall worship the LORD in the holy mount at Jerusalem. 28:1 Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim, whose glorious beauty is a fading flower, which are on the head of the fat valleys of them that are overcome with wine! 28:2 Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one, which as a tempest of hail and a destroying storm, as a flood of mighty waters overflowing, shall cast down to the earth with the hand. 28:3 The crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim, shall be trodden under feet: 28:4 And the glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley, shall be a fading flower, and as the hasty fruit before the summer; which when he that looketh upon it seeth, while it is yet in his hand he eateth it up.

dag11 14y ago

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

corwinstephen 14y ago
Hacker news guidelines: "If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
- ta12121 14y ago
  There's even been House episodes about this condition. It's not exactly obscure.

jacobr 14y ago

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

jlgreco 14y ago

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.

olalonde 14y ago

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 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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.

drostie 14y ago

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-93d9-001cc4c002e0.html http://tdn.com/lifestyles/article_e230b156-b22e-11df-93d9-00... 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.

swombat 14y ago

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 14y ago
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 14y ago
  Was it this one? http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9x8qc/i_am_unable_to_feel_pain_hot_or_cold_i_have_cipa/?sort=hot http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9x8qc/i_am_unable_to_f... I also found one by a guy: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/e8g5e/ama_a_guy_that_feels_no_physical_pain_due_to_cipa/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/e8g5e/ama_a_guy_that_f...
fghh45sdfhr3 14y ago
He speculates his brother committed suicide because of this condition, so I'm pretty sure emotional pain is there. Probably also why pain killers don't help with feeling sad.

nmutua 14y ago

must be really horrible agony. cant imagine how life would be without pain. we always complain about our small pains. this should encourage us to brace ourselves and only complain if the hurt is serious. same with painkillers. so many people take pills immediately when they feel something. lets be a lil bit tougher and think about what it would be like to feel no pain at all. pain is healthy (most of the time)

freehunter 14y ago

>"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.

haberman 14y ago

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 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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.

gwern 14y ago

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/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/51f/guilt_another_gift_nobody_wants/