Whenever breaking a bone or spraining something or things of that nature, PTs and orthopedists always say “if it doesn’t hurt it’s fine.”
What would be scenarios where pain (or lack thereof) DOESN’T properly let you know if something is fully healed or injured or not?
In: Biology
Some people actually do have conditions that cause them to not have pain! And it’s actually quite dangerous—if you can’t feel pain, you can’t feel if you’re injured, or if something is infected. There’d need to be extra caution. I mean, if you’re walking and you step on glass, we’d feel it. Somebody with no pain who didn’t see glass on the floor who steps on it—well, they don’t feel it. They keep walking. The glass is still in their foot, probably being jostled about. It could hit a vessel and they could bleed out a lot. It could hit a tendon or nerve and result in permanent damage. Even if they’re lucky in that front, once it’s removed and stitched up, they might not notice that there’s an infection in the bottom of their foot. It’s a difficult place to see and they can’t feel the pain. Fractured a tooth? Can’t feel it so now it’s infected. Bitten your tongue? No initial pain response means the bite may be more severe. What about food? A sharp piece of food stuck in your throat? Or, consistently eating or drinking food too hot because you can’t feel the pain? That could damage the oesophagus. Even acid reflux—if you never feel it burn your throat, you never notice the damage. Long term, that’s a cancer risk. What about appendicitis? Can’t feel pain, so….welp, less warning I’d imagine.
And some people for some reason have far too much pain! For some people, even a light touch on the skin causes a pain reaction.
I’m somebody who has a level of chronic pain, and it generally means that I have a higher than average but not freakishly high pain tolerance—and this has led to me dismissing injuries and thinking that I’m probably being dramatic, then finding out that actually, I was in a worse condition than I thought. I’m talking dislocation, btw. Resulted in me walking on a freshly dislocated joint up flights of stairs with a heavy backpack, no pain meds. Now that joint is unstable (well…more unstable than the rest of my joints). Chronic pain is wild when you find out that the normal level of pain to be in is zero. So you don’t even need a complete absence of pain to struggle to know the nature of an injury.
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