First, let me state for the record that Teddy does feel pain. His testing through NIH showed that his nerve receptors function fairly normally, and he will cry from pain. However, he has an extremely high threshold for pain unless he is tired or crabby. Those factors seem to impact his ability to tolerate pain, where we'll see tears. However, those tears never last as long as they would for most people.
The other weekend, I was making a quesadilla for my lunch in a skillet. Teddy had already devoured most of his lunch, so I quick ran downstairs to get him an orange. When I came back upstairs, he was holding a spatula, poking my quesadilla and looking quite proud of himself. I shooshed him away because I didn't want him to get burned (and candidly wanted to not have my lunch mangled). We both finished our lunches, if you consider Teddy eating part of my quesadilla me getting to finish my lunch.
About an hour later, I was playing with him and noticed a nearly 3-inch mark on his arm. I instantly knew that he had burned himself. He never yelped, cried, made any sound or had any noticeable reaction to burning himself. His burn even blistered, so it was a significant burn and will leave a dandy scar for at least a few years.
These are the things that are tough with Teddy. His safety skills are non-existent because unsafe things are fun. The more dangerous, the more fun. And when something is fun, he tends to get the giggles. The giggles diminish his ability to walk straight, much less stand up without falling down, which means it's even more dangerous. Combine that with a high pain threshold, and there's plenty of mystery marks we never quite know how they occurred.
I wonder how many concussions he's had through the years, but I'm quite sure I really don't want to know.
No comments:
Post a Comment