Asperger's and high pain threshold?

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Nope but that's because I had an epidural and it numbed me down there. I had one because I was afraid of pain and the labor pains were getting worse and worse and I was afraid of dealing with pain again and having it worse than the last pain I felt when I had my uterus cleaned out after my miscarriage. I was told that is what labor feels like except worse. But when labor came it didn't feel bad at all but maybe if I went natural I may have felt it or unless the doctors were bullshitting me or I just had higher pain tolerance.

Something similar had happened to me when I was 7 yo. I tilted the upper part of a cupboard over, stood aside, but a floor-vase on top of it hit my right cheek and cut it, 5+2 stitches were needed to fix it. I still have those scars, the surgery didn't do a great job with it. I remember I knew about my injury nothing, my mother screamed when she saw my bleeding face...

I don't exactly like touching hot things , but I can tolerate it well, and I wouldn't drop a hot tray because of it too.

How can you tolerate electricity? I can touch 230V without problem. Well, 120V is not as high.

I have a generally high pain threshold - lots of examples, broken bones not seen to immediately, when my appendix burst I only really started complaining about "tummy ache" 2 hours before I was unconscious from toxic shock...........

What I found interesting, when I was admitted to hospital with a broken arm I was asked to describe my pain on a scale of 1-10. The scale had examples of how 'bad' each level is....I didn't get it. I said 8, because I thought that was what a broken arm should be. 10 mins later I found myself hooked up to a morphine drip...
A couple of paracetamol would have done the trick.

After the event, I was working through things with someone more in tune with AS, and I was shown the child's pain scale chart - it has 4 levels:

Happy face. No pain
Medium face. Pain, but not really bothered enough to stop what you're doing.
Sad face. Pain, and bothered enough to want comforting.
Crying face. Really really bad pain.

I can only discern these 4 levels of pain.
Even though I am an adult I was told in future to explain to healthcare professionals that I should be assessed against this scale, not the 1-10 scale.

I think I may have a high pain threshhold.
I do feel pain, but I deal with it.
I have had root canal filling with no anasthetic, 5 x childbirth with no painkillers at all, and various other thing with no pain killers. All of tose I was expecting, and that may be why it was easy to rationalise. Because the purpose of pain is to warn you there is an injury, once the injury has been noticed, the pain is no longer useful, at least no tto the same degree. (still useful to know how long to rest an injury)
I've got a bad habit of ignoring achey pain too, I would limp for days before wondering why.
I hate it when my kids injure themselves though, I find that very hard to handle.

I have a very low pain threshold, as a hockey player that can be an issue

it's funny to see people talking about a high pain threshold, because I always thought it was the other way around

pain is a funny sensation though, and it's not unusual to cut yourself and not even notice until you see it. Things like adrenaline can also interfere with your brain's capacity to register pain.

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http://defeatingthedoginthedaytime.blogspot.com/

the trials and tribulations of a girl pretending to be normal

I actually got shocked by a 120V 15amp wire yesterday afternoon when working on rebuilding a kitchen! It has hanging and it shocked me in the back of the next, I was a bit startled but it didn't really hurt, just kind of felt like someone lightly pinched me for a second... I didn't even stop what I was doing really, just kind of moved a little bit out of the way of the wire and continued. As a kid I used to love the sensation of touching a 9V battery to my tongue. (I'm kind of excited there is a emoticon called tongue!)

I have family that live in the countryside and they have horses. They use an electric fence to keep them from running off. Once when we went to visit them I didn't realise the fence was turned on because my cousins were holding it so I did to, apparently my aunt told everyone to get off the fence but I didn't hear because I was too busy looking at the horses. So I was still holding it when she switched it on and I got an electric shock, apparently electric fences are supposed to be at 6000 volts so I had a 6000 volt electric shock and I didn't cry. I wouldn't like to experience it again mind you and I had to go sit inside for a bit, my arms just ached for ages, probably because the electricity forced my muscles to contract.

I'm weird. With things that aren't supposed to hurt much, I'll feel lots of pain. With things that are meant to hurt a lot, I won't feel much.

I cam continue running at a reasonable speed when my feet hurt, I am short of breath and I have a stitch. I'm not at all fit, just determined.

The exception is any blow to the testicles. Light blows generally cause me distress, but I can continue moving. Moderate to heavy blows totally immobalise me.

I'm the opposite. I have an extremely LOW pain threshold. One of my biggest problems with AS is sensory issues, and I'm hypersensitive in every way imaginable except for vestibular sense, which I am hyposensitive towards. I feel pain much more easily and much more intensely than most people. One example is getting an IV. I've only had an IV once, when I got anesthesia to have my wisdom teeth removed. I was told that, once the needle was inserted, I wouldn't feel it. And everyone I've asked who's had an IV said that's what they experienced. I felt the needle in me the whole time. Plus, I have had several supposedly routine and painless medical procedures/exams that have reduced me to tears every time.

my family used to call me a whiner when I'd complain about my feet. of course now that they're starting to fail to a much greater degree, looking back on it it was probably because my family is full of butt holes.

anyway i think my pain experiences are typical.

Just yesterday I slashed my hand with a knife trying to cut watermelon, I put Neosporin on it and everything, but I just felt like I got scratched by a branch or somthing. Earlier today I backed into the kitchen counter (all my accidents are in the kitchen, ha ha) and cut open my hip. Yeah, I guess you could say I tolerate pain.

My sister Hannah stubbed her toe and cried for ten minutes.

I just don't get it.

Well, I have another thing to put on my perks list

I'm like a lot of posters in this thread. I have a high pain threshold for certain 'events' - such as walking on a broken foot (with moderate difficulty) thinking it wasn't broken because of lack of swelling/discoloration. I was able to afford x-rays 3 weeks later. The techs tried telling me (before x-raying) that it wouldn't have been possible for me to do what I'd been doing if the foot had been broken...words they later had to 'eat' when the x-rays showed recent healing of the break. Yet, I (also) experience undeniable/unavoidable pain from clapping my hands for long, from sudden/unexpected bright lights in my eyes, and find pain from needles practically unbearable (had once been held down as a young child by 5 adults during an injection attempt...not quite as phobic now). I'm still trying to identify the individual situations in which my pain tolerance is high(er)...mostly in interest of more quickly addressing injuries/illnesses that should be immediately addressed. I don't really want to repeat the experience of moving around with a broken bone...it could lead to worsening the situation.

See, that's what I'm worried about. My mom always says if I can move it or walk on it, it's not broken, just sprained, bruised, whatever, but when I got my hand smashed between a goat's head/horns and a tree my teacher who used to be a football player (i.e. he know's what a broken bone looks like) said it looked broken. Once when I was little I told my mom that my ear hurt a little, so she took me to the doctor and he showed us this chart of ear infection stages or something, and he pointed to the next to last one and said if we had waited a couple more days my eardrum probably would've burst. So now my mom takes me to the doctor the first time I complain about anything other than a headache, so now I never complain about any pain in front of her no matter how bad it hurts because going to the doctor is a million times worse for me. I figure either I can diagnose and cure it myself, it'll get better on it's own, or it'll kill me lol. I'm weird with pain, like if I fall and scrape my knee or sprain my ankle it doesn't really bother me and I usually don't take any pain meds, but if someone else is doing something to me (like getting my teeth cleaned, my mom brushing my hair when I was younger) hurts really bad and makes me cry. Even now if my mom is doing my hair like for a party or something (I'm scared to use a curling iron) I involuntarily pull away and my eyes usually water, but a few months ago when my hair was long I would just rip through the tangles and pull out chunks of hair, same thing for plucking eyebrows (not that my eyebrows get tangled lol, that it hurts when someone else does it to me). The last time I remember crying from a self-inflicted accidental injury was when I got poked in the eyebrow with a hot wire (electric fence). In my psychology class in high school, the book said something about girls having a higher pain tolerance than boys, and all the guys were like "That's BS, girls can't handle pain, blah blah blah." So we did an experiment where we had to put our hand in ice water and see who could hold it there longest. Of course I got to represent the girls. The guy was trying to be all macho and tough and whatnot, but I easily outlasted him. Although that didn't really prove anything since I'm not NT, but for sure AS girl pain tolerance > NT boy pain tolerance.

I have average to above average pain tolerance, even though I am hypersensitive.

Megz; I think those with high(er) thresholds (or who may experience indifference or lack of realization) for pain and/or illness may find it useful to create/implement a different 'measuring' system when attempting to evaluate the seriousness of injury or illness. Basing decisions more off of general human anatomy (as opposed to how does one PERSONALLY feel or might describe their pain) may produce more accurate conclusions/decisions. For example, because I'd known I'd been going without milk (and hadn't sufficiently replaced that lost source of calcium) for a few years before the incident that resulted in a broken foot, I should have remembered/put into my calculations that my bones were somewhat more brittle and probably somewhat more prone to breakage. I shouldn't have made a decision (to not more immediately seek professional evaluation) based just (or primarily) off my ability to walk despite the pain. I really think the lack of bruising or swelling was a very rare exception and had been (possibly) due to having a somewhat abnormally low percentage of overall body fat at the time. But, even with taking into consideration other factors other than one's pain index, conclusions can still be wrong. Errors are made often - even with all the relevant information possible (all the malpractice suits bear that out). Sometimes, when errors are made, it just becomes a situation of 'having' to accept the error and trying to move on.

Sometimes, it's just a matter of prevention (rather than trying to evaluate damage level after the fact). I learned prevention from the event that broke my foot. It isn't necessarily that I don't do that particular action now (though, given that the action involved motorcycle-riding, it maybe would be smarter ), but I do apply prevention in HOW I perform the action (this 'event' involved 100% fault on the part of the other driver - I forestall that possibility now by 'staging' other drivers, in addition to 'anticipating' them. One's a more active role, while the other's a more passive reaction).

Hopefully, some of this can contribute towards lessening the concern I sensed in your last post. Some common-sense shared by others (or sense gained through personal, sometimes painful, experience...can't hope to avoid all of it) applied towards prevention, using external(ized) data for evaluating methodologies (which may include really assessing relevant info such as age of event's participants, height of a fall/potential fall, what the same event could signify to someone similar (in build, in overall health, etc.) to you, etc. ), and pre-designating personal defaults (such as 'if X happens, I'll ask my room-mate to watch for signs of disorientation/concussion', 'if X type of pain persists for more than X# of days, then I'll go directly to my care provider, 'if X happens, then I'll go directly to my care provider', or 'if X happens, I'll have a notice in my wallet directing others to get an ambulance to take me to St. Vincent's ER)...these common(shared) sense preventions and methods of evaluating illness/injury may be 'more the thing' for Aspies living their lives. Take good care of yourselves.

I can totally relate to this. It's what has left doctors baffled by not knowing what is wrong with my shoulder. I do feel the pain but once I go to the doctor, I get more worried about being in a place with sick people and people I don't know that I forget the pain... its like... even when the doctor or nurses are pressing the tender areas... I don't flinch. They tend to shrug it off as being something minor... which I gues sis lucky because if it was something serious.... then they probably wouldn't even know because of the high pain threshold. My mom has told them about me having autism and they just treat me like a ret*d... so that's why I always can't stand doctors and hospitals. I do feel the pain... but I react to it differently and I always avoid it by not going to the doctor... because I know its just going to end up being a hassle where they will shrug it off... because I can't express the pain.