Feel No Pain

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. 

A Blessing and A Curse

One of the most challenging aspects of Teddy's diagnosis is that he has an extremely high threshold for pain. That's dangerous on a non-verbal child who can't articulate what hurts and often shows no sign of discomfort until things are seriously wrong. When he's tired or upset, he will cry more easily for pain, but it usually takes a whole lot to faze him.

That turned out to be a blessing yesterday when we knew exactly how much pain and discomfort he should be experiencing. He was playing at the park with his staff, went down the slide and came off covered in bees (likely yellow jackets). His staff reported to us that Teddy got stung twice on the face, and that his staff got stung a couple times as well shooshing the bastards off Teddy (my words, not his). When Dave was helping Teddy out of the vehicle, 6 half dead bees fell off Teddy's jacket, and Dave picked off one more later in the house. Dave pulled one stinger from another spot. Based on the welts, our best guess is Teddy got stung 5 times on his face.

He had welts and was a bit swollen, and we immediately gave him Benadryl and kept a close eye on him for an allergic reaction as this was the first time he was stung. Aside from the welts, you wouldn't have known he was stung. No crying. No rubbing his face. No scratching.

I just got stung last week Friday, and that still itches at time. I used ice packs for several days and couldn't sleep one night because it itched so much. Apparently I'm a major wuss compared to Teddy.

We e-mailed his staff to find out how he reacted in the moment he got stung. The answer was that he cried for a minute and then seemed fine.

Five stings. One minute of crying.

It's a blessing and a curse, but yesterday it was a blessing.