I read a story once about a girl who was born without the ability to feel pain. Normal things like cuts and scrapes would go totally unnoticed. She lacked the ability to tell the difference between cold and hot, or to retract her hand after touching something she shouldn’t have. Apparently, this is an extremely rare condition in humans.

This girl was apparently so immune to pain that her mother and father accidentally burned her in the bathtub when she was a baby and that’s how they discovered she had this condition. The hot water never caused her any discomfort; it never triggered any kind of response. Prior to being diagnosed, her parents had no idea they were hurting her.

As the girl grew older, she had to be constantly looked over. Some days she would show up from playing outside with her friends, bleeding all over her clothes but totally unaware that she had been injured. She spent weeks covered in terrible bruises that she never knew she’d received. [Read more…]