Endure the Pain, Enjoy the Gain

 

             Although pages and pages have been said about No pain, No gain, I came across a different perspective to it. This is a true incident that happened to me to change my outlook to this very common proverb.

              It is about a patient that I came across recently that lead me to thinking about the importance of good and bad feelings in our lives. There was a young boy around 5-6 years of age whose parents called up saying that their kid had redness of eyes and wanted to visit the hospital. My receptionist being a non-medico asked them if their child is in pain which he wasn’t and consequently instead of seeing them urgently as they should have been, she called them after 2-3 days. When I saw him in the clinic he had a huge corneal ulcer (infection on the cornea which is usually blinding) with blood shot red eyes and difficulty in seeing. He had no other symptom. Still no pain or discomfort. I was quite amazed as the infection of such a magnitude, usually leaves the patient incapacitated. I started treating the basic pathology with which he had come to us i.e; the infection, with a note in capital letters in his case record saying NO PAIN. I had decided to re-visit that problem later, after the main infection had settled down. The infection gradually reduced within a month’s duration leaving a scar on the cornea. Now was the time to refer back to that little note written on the top of his case record (NO PAIN). I decided to do a detailed neurological examination for him. To my surprise I noted that his hands were full of scars and one of his wrists was a little crooked, further examination revealed a malaligned healed fracture. His knees and feet had several scars too. One of his knees had a large bruise which looked quite recent but he wasn’t complaining. The idea of child-abuse came to my mind with so many injuries. Then I did the sensory examination for him and started poking his skin at various parts of his body with a fine needle. He didn’t even wince his eyes leave alone feeling the pain to withdraw himself which is the usual normal response. I was puzzled and worried. I was amazed too. I had never come across something like this before. I asked him to see a neuro-physician and took his contact details to make sure he was fine and also to keep myself updated about this Wonder-Kid. I went home with the puzzle in my mind and the puzzle wouldn’t leave me at peace. After finishing my daily dinner ritual I started scanning the huge dust filled piles of my medical books and journals.

 After going through a lot of articles and books full of diseases, I finally came across this disease called CIPA (Congenital Insensitivity to Pain and Anhidrosis). In simple words it is a disease in which the person doesnot feel any pain since birth. To them the sensation of pain is an unknown feeling as they have never felt it ever in their lives. They don’t know how painful it is to fall on their knees and bruise them, they don’t realise how horrible it feels to sip onto a boiling hot cup of milk and scald their tongue, they don’t feel the discomfort of breaking their bones while playing. They are like Super-Humans. I thought to myself, “Oh Wow! Aren’t they ‘blessed’! Don’t we all want that, absence of pain. Not feeling the Bad sensation at all.” But then I kept reading further into the disease and reached to a stage where the complications resulting from CIPA were enlisted. These people can’t feel the scalding, so they would continue to have hot food anyways and burn their tongue. Since there is no pain the body doesn’t stop and take time to heal but continues the pain causing activity, resulting in the worsening of the situation. Their bone is broken in a limb but since there is no pain, they wouldn’t notice the broken bone and keep working with the broken limb and thus results in malaligned bone structure. So is the case with multiple cuts and bruises. After I finished reading, I made a note to myself to discuss the case with the neuro-physician and also made the list of pre-cautions that he would need for life like having warm or room temperature rather than hot/cold food, always wearing gloves and socks, not going out in extreme cold or hot-environments, after every fall or injury to get x-rays or atleast a complete check-up for broken bones and unnoticed cuts and bruises. To check the eyes each and every day for any redness or swelling on the lids etc.

 

             As I was lying on my bed trying to fall asleep, I started thinking, “So much for not feeling the pain”. We all desire absence of pain from our lives. But its absence can make us so crippled. Pain is actually like a traffic police of our body. It keeps us from taking wrong turns in life, helps us follow the correct ways, maintain a correct speed limit and stop at the signals. And when we break any of these rules it punishes us by the PAIN. It tells us to slow down, take some time out and let the body heal. It teaches us to be cautious of certain things and we  learn to avoid them . In the same way, the feeling of pain to our mind, feeling of hurt keeps us in check morally. There are these painful feelings like Guilt, Remorse, Loss, Sadness, Dissappointment, Suffering which help us become a better person. Guilt keeps our intentions in check. A person with guilt will always think a hundred times before doing the wrong thing. The feeling of remorse is also useful to help a person to repent for his wrong deeds and indeed teaches him to avoid doing such deeds in future life so as to avoid having a similar situation. The feeling of being away from a loved one makes you love the person even more. Loss and Disappointment although make us feel bad and dejected in the beginning but they also give us a sense of Hope and Strength for a better tomorrow. And lastly the feeling of sadness and suffering, which is felt by each and every person in life, helps us to learn to deal with difficult situations in life. To feel sad is important to realise the importance of being Happy in life. It is the presence of sadness which wants to make us work hard towards happiness in our lives. If you have felt this sadness in your life you would realise the importance of happiness in yours as well as others life.

 

Only rare people in life are ‘cursed’ with the disease of CIPA, but a lot of us are emotionally numb and are ‘cursed’ with the Moral Insensitivity to Pain (by pain I mean all the negative feelings), thus lacking to  realise the importance of Good feelings in life. Embrace pain and Realise the importance of Pleasure.