Pain Tolerance

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Last weekend, I managed to find myself in the emergency room for an ongoing chronic problem that I have. Essentially, it is a cyst located directly above my tailbone (often called a pilonidal cyst). All the emergency room surgeon could do at the time was cut into it with his trusty medical scalpel and relieve the pressure since the final surgery is exceedingly complicated and usually results in a 8-9 month recovery period (where you can not even sit down). However before he operated, he told me that usually they put people under for the surgery that i was about to have with an iv and gas. However, due to my aspergers he was not able to do that (something i have never heard before + i have been put under for surgery multiple times). Any way i also happen to have the misfortune of being allergic to almost all pain medication. So the doctor settled for just giving me ibuprofen before cutting into me. This got me thinking, I happen to be exceptionally good at ignoring excruciating pain. However, lesser pains such as scratches and scrapes i find much more irking. Is anyone else like this?

Not exactly like you, but my pain tolerance is weird. I literally feel no pain for most things. Like, I just had stitches a few weeks ago. Neither the cut (5 or 6 stitches wide) nor the process of having them put in hurt in the slightest. When I scratch myself so hard I bleed I can barely feel it's there, let alone be in pain. I get bruises, nothing. Dry skin that bleeds, nothing. Hitting my head, still, yeah, nothing.

However, one thing and one thing only I do feel pain for. And it's so bad such that painkiller simply does not work. God damn periods. Screw the damn female organ.

But yeah, I'd rather be hit hard than softly touched. I am ticklish as hell. I don't see how it makes sense but that's the way it is. I can feel if I'm brushed very lightly, but can't feel when I'm unknowingly scratching myself afterwards so much it bleeds. Stupid body.

Yeah, my pain tolerances are all over the place. some things seem to hurt loads (insect bites spring to mind) and other things don't (taking hot things out of the oven).

Severe injuries don't' seem to register for a while either; It took me 3 days to notice a collapsed lung and the first time I tried to get it checked I was turned away with an inhaler by a nurse because 'I simply wasn't in enough pain'.

What happened when I finally got treatment was even weirder, they gave me a trainee doctor who f****d it up the first time (I ended up with a pneumatic boob job on one side), this freaked me out quite a lot and I became over sensitive to pain. The nurse tried to put a drip in my hand whilst I wasn't looking and I pretty much lashed out it hurt so much. I was able to keep still the next time tho

I also wandered around with a vertical split in my tibia for a few days in my late teens. The swelling eventually dislocated my knee cap and then the pain really kicked in.

My skin absorbs brute pain (Punches, calf twisting and s**t) and heat no problem but small things like cuts and bug bites can drive me insane, its really weird

I'm like that too! Over heard though that some people are just tougher than others, but also aspies tend to be less aware of there bodies, which could be positive or negative depending on how you see it. But we will feel pain less easily, but just like cold, hunger, and some times emotional pain. I don't know if that's true but I believe in it. But then for some reason, bug bites seem to be a seperate thing...

Omg these are the worst to me

Oh, that reminds me. I don't really have a sense of hunger, at least all the time. For about 1/4 of a month I will but the rest it sort of doesn't exist. To solve that I eat at set times and measure stuff out.

And my sense of heat is, well, awful. So a week ago the humidity was 100% so I figured, hey, let's go out in short sleeved t-shirt, humidity being this high means I don't get cold, right? Well, for me, yes. It was 6C out there. Everyone else had coats on. I didn't feel cold. That's no one-off, either. I feel very hot very easily, have done for a number of years. Before that I was the opposite. I can go outside in freezing cold weather and not have goosebumps nor feel cold, or shiver. If anyone can think of why the hell this is I'd love to know because it's weird. I get too hot if it's much above 10C (50F), especially if it's humid.

My hearing, touch and temperature senses are completely off, my sight is only slightly (sensitive to light levels, not so far as I'd worry about it, it's pretty mild, just have the sun blocked out always ) and the rest are normal, to my knowledge.

My sensitivities are all over the place as well; things which are called 'pain' usually (blunt trauma, cuts, burns, broken bones) barely registrer above 'meh' for me, while the reverse is alto true: a small brushing of skin-to-skin, even trough clothes (such as when you are sitting on a crowded couch) gives me excruciating pain, while the other person involved barely noticed we were touching.

sound: up to 11 all the way; i hear the small discharges between the poles of a wall socket on the other side of the room if i'm not careful.

vision: cat-like, my night-vision is such that i can see perfectly well. i can read a book using only a small pinpoint in the curtains, too small for an NT to even realise the puncture, and i see colour at moonlight (i only recently found out that this is weird).
of course, this means that my day-vision is also very sensitive, but without slit pupils, i'm effectively blind without sunglasses...

I have really high pain tolerance. I can get pierced in 6-8 places at once without blinking an eye. And other painful stuff is easier for me too, I guess.

P.S. Emotional pain hurts more.

I would definitely agree with that. When I was a little younger and found out that people found my reaction to pain weird(that is minimal to no reactions). I would let people punch me as a hard as they could so they would hang out with me. I would go home all the time with what my mother told me were pretty severe bruises and cuts. This was not uncommon though before that, because I would get hurt a lot without even knowing about it and due to that I would quite often find myself diving on the wooden basket ball courts or on the astro-turf at school in an attempt to save the ball or get to a base(sometimes these things worked out and i actually saved the ball but usually i failed. I always got to a base safely though.) Anyway, back to the story. As time went on though people started coming up with what they called "better' ways to prove that i could not feel the pain they believed they were inflicting. I still have a scar from when i drove a pen half way through my hand. I can not really say I was unhappy at the time though because people were actually hanging out with me and besides possible damage to internals it seemed a small price to pay. It was not until a kid that happened to be a boxer said that if he punched me "Below the belt" (wonder omitted and replaced for common decency) that he guaranteed that i would drop. He did it about seventeen times before a kid (that eventually became some one i might consider a friend) pulled me aside and told me i had to stop letting people do this to me. No idea why i listened to him but i did and that was that.

Post Scriptum

In hind sight it might be because I felt like i had fulfilled the need for social acceptance in that environment with that person.

I used to smash my head against things for my brothers They found it weird how I don't feel pain from smashing my head against stuff, which I suppose it weird.

It doesn't go for everyone. It's just that we pay less attention to how we feel for certain things and other tiny things irritate us ... A lot!

What is interesting to me is that I now know of 4 individuals (3 being my students) with autism who have suffered with pilonidal cysts! I haven't been able to find any connection online, and I assume that it is probably related to pain tolerance and not notifying someone about the condition until it is pretty advanced.

Has anyone else had this specific problem or know of others who have?