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Comment by iforgotpassword | Hacker News Reader

I'm baffled by the fact she only realized it when she was 65. I understand that when you were born like that it might just be normal, and maybe you don't put too much thought into it, but it's just... Didn't she ever wonder why other people scream like crazy when they touch a hot pan, hit their head, and she doesn't? Didn't other people realize in those 65 years that she doesn't have any reaction when it happens to her? Did she maybe just "learn" to say ouch when she hits her toe against the door frame, because that's what others do?

Also how did she not die as a child? When you never get the negative feedback of touching something got, cutting yourself, breaking a rib falling off a tree... This is just crazy to me, more than the fact that this condition actually exists.

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I read the same story from NY Times, which had a more detailed write up. She likely inherited the genes from her dad. "Likely" because they can't test her dad's genes since he's deceased. Her dad didn't really feel pain either, so growing up it was not that abnormal.

Her son has a similar mutation but daughter doesn't.

NY Times Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/health/woman-pain-anxiety...

Thanks, that clears it up some more. It also reads like at least her husband must have noticed, but apparently since reddit etc. wasn't a thing when they were younger they never felt the urge to make posts about it all over the internet and getting everyone's attention. ;)

Right. You're normal, and everyone else are just whingers.

Reminds me of Ferro, in Abercrombie's First Law trilogy. She felt no pain. But she was not at all happy. More like always angry.

That was such an amazing series, and I found it had a lasting emotional impact. I still feel vaguely hurt and angry when I think about it!

Same here. I've read that, on one level, it's a satire on the Ring Trilogy. It's almost pure tragedy (with issues resolved through destruction) but has some very sweet comedy (with issues resolved through friendship and marriage).

And there are virtually no pure heroes or villains. I mean, he gets you feeling sympathetic with an expert torturer. And with a bunch of more-or-less psychotic marauders. Because he gets to to understand what's shaped them. What they've been through. And as well, it's loaded with great fight sequences.

If you haven't read his other books in that world, I highly recommend it. There's one that's largely about Logen.

This reminded me of the delightful David Foster Wallace bit:

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

> Didn't she ever wonder why other people scream like crazy when they touch a hot pan...

Kids learn to do this regardless of pain. And even adults do feel pain when they believe that they should feel pain (but really don't). So I don't think it needs to be super obvious.

I recall a story decades ago about a kid who couldn't feel pain. He wound up massively injuring himself playing football with a broken leg.

A lot of apparently normal people don't realise that they're a psychopath. They learn to imitate empathy by rote, but they don't actually experience it and don't realise that anything is missing in their perception of the world.

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/outintheopen/impostors-1.4695876/ho...

I would certainly have died as a child... given the stuff I enjoy doing, the lack of pain would probably have manifested as a feeling of total invincibility. I'm pretty sure therefore, I'd be dead.

Though it does lead you to wonder just what the limits are of how much the body could tolerate before it breaks in the absence of pain.

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