The Girl Who Couldn’t Feel Pain By: Anushka Bhatt

 The Girl Who Couldn’t Feel Pain

By: Anushka Bhatt  II Nervous System & Medical Curiosity

I met her at a skate park. She did a 360 flip and skinned her entire knee. Didn’t flinch.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I have congenital insensitivity to pain.”

Turns out, there are people who literally can’t feel pain. Sounds like a superpower… until you realize pain is your body’s warning system.

She once broke her arm and didn’t notice until someone pointed out the angle was off.

“I’d trade it for just one good headache,” she said. “At least I’d know my body’s talking to me.”

It made me wonder—maybe pain, annoying as it is, is part of being alive.

Works Cited:

National Institutes of Health. “Congenital Insensitivity to Pain.” Genetics Home Reference, U.S. National Library of Medicine, https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/condition/congenital-insensitivity-to-pain/.

Habib, Abdul, et al. “Congenital Insensitivity to Pain: A Review.” The Ochsner Journal, vol. 15, no. 3, 2015, pp. 253–256, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4557232/.