Delayed pain

When I feel pain, it is almost delayed. Especially if I still have to understand that the feeling I am experiencing is pain.

My affect may be flat when I struggle. My face may look angry or sad. But I am in pain, I just don’t know it yet.

My experience with pain is weird. Most people just don’t get why or how can it be. If you will ask them they will say that I must be faking it. But I don’t. I don’t know why my pain works the way it works. I am autistic. I was abused physically and mentally as a child and a teenager. I was not allowed to show emotion. And for me, if I can’t express something, I just don’t feel it. It doesn’t happen. If I am forbidden to ask questions I won’t be able to find something interesting. If I am not allowed to cry, it is not really sad. If I don’t flap my hands I don’t really feel the joy.

But I am going of track here, so lets go back. I feel pain, but it is wierd. Here are some memories that may loom some light over how I (and may be other people as well) experience pain.

Candle

I am in a sexy party. I used special candles which melts in low temperatures to draw with drops on a friends spine. She enjoyed it a lot. I wanted to try it as well. So I take my shirt of and lay on my stomach and let someone drop hot wax on me. But as soon as they start (I think, because I don’t see what is going on) I ask to move the candle higher and drip in a slower pace because it is really painful. I cry for some time for them to stop until the one I used the candle on her move her hands over the place I felt the wax dripping on. She tells me that the moment I cried to slow down they stopped. But I experienced that the dripping continued.

Period

I am at the lab. I work on whatever experiment I have to work on. From the morning I feel something. I am not really aware of the feeling, but I notice that my coordination sucks and my hands move slower. When I go to the -80°C freezer, about the middle of my work to take or store samples I recognize that I feel something. I don’t know what, but something is wrong. I keep working. At noon I go to eat lunch. I eat alone, but this is usually what happens. Now I have some time to think about what is going on. I understand that I am in pain. It is in my lower abdomen. I am confused. But later visit at the bathroom indicates that my menstrual bleeding have started. My menstruation is painful, every time. Really painful. With lots of additional symptoms like constipation and diarrhea (sometimes at the same day) and overall swelling and additional 3 kgs. This time I was just surprised.

Speculum

This actually happened today. I had some…uneasiness around my genitals for sometime. At some point I understand that I experience pain. I ask the help of my partner to look on what is going on with my vulva (because I can’t see what is going on there), and apparently I have dermatitis and infection. I don’t want to go to the gynecologist because my regular awesome gynecologist is, as I learn later, is abroad. But I have to get treatment so I make an appointment to the next morning. My partner can take me there and even accompany me, and I am pleased.

At the gynecologist's office I am asked the “regular” anamnesis with question about my period and one about using birth control. I tell about my symptoms without suggesting the diagnosis because most doctors hate that (even if I am right every time). And then, to the horror chair. The speculum causes me to feel like something is pinched. The ultrasound rod is not getting in smoothly. It is not fun, but I do my best to relax.

I am given a systematic treatment to fungi. I ask the gynecologist if he is sure it is not bacterial (like the symptoms show) but he is sure. I try to talk to him about my pain during periods again (I mentioned it before but he kept silent). He says that the only thing that will help is using “the pill”. This is bullshit, but I don’t argue.

So we go out. When we are near the car I fold in half, in pain. My inside is all in pain. I feel what I had to feel 10 minutes ago only now.

I have to find a new gynecologist.

Flu

I am sick. I still live with my parents. My grandmother comes to me in the morning and asks how do I feel. I have no idea, I just woke up. Only after half hour I feel my headache.

Saturday morning

I wake up at Saturday morning. I feel as usual. I brush my teeth. I go to the kitchen, where my parents and grandparents are. I feel like something in the way I walk isn’t right but I don’t do anything about it.

“What happened to your leg?” my mother asks.

“nothing”

“You are limping” my grandmother says.

They are right. I throw my right leg forward every step. Only after 30 minutes I feel the pain in my ankle.

Bed

I am with my partner in our apartment, in bed. I accidentally hit his jaw with my head. He is in pain, I comfort him. After short time (15 seconds?) my head hurts as well. We talk about pain perception for some time.

Tea

I am helping up friends to cook or clean something in the kitchen. My partner tries to get a bowl out of the top shelf. If falls and with it falls a huge and heavy tea brick right on my foot. My partner is in panic, asks me if I am alright. I bark that I am fine and limp to the couch. I examine my foot. Apparently I will have a hematoma near my lateral malleolus and a cut on my foot. I feel the pain after short time, while asking my partner to give me a piece of gause and a permission from the friends to use the shower.

I was cut by a tea brick.

Car accident

I am 7 years old. I don’t know how, but I sit near the car of my family. I watch my dad taking my mom out, she is unconscious. I sit there till the ambulance arrives. I feel confused. I listen to the siren while we are on our way. In the hospital they try to move me, but my legs are in pain. The worst pain ever. I can’t even bare a for my legs to be touched. I don’t know enough medicine to understand what is going on, but I know they are taking an x-ray. No one informs me about anything. I am in so much pain.

At the end, nothing was broken in me. My parents and grandmother had multiple fractures. My grandfather and sister were fine. After a week in bed I had to learn how to walk again.

These are just some of my experiences with pain. I can go on and share more, but I think these are enough. I am always confused when people can tell right away how and what they feel, and don’t have to think about it and know the difference between different kinds of pain with ease. How do they do that?

How do you experience pain? Did you had similar experiences or something totally different? I would like to read all about it, so please comment so I can learn about other perspectives.