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.
