Can You Feel It?

Congenital Insensitivity to pain, or CI, is a dangerous syndrome that causes a person to feel no physical pain. 35 Americans are said to suffer from this potentially debilitating disorder, but there is the possibility that there are more undiagnosed cases.

Like a train running off its tracks, the signals the organs of the body send to the brain aren’t received. In some cases, the signals are received but the brain does not know how to or cannot interpret this information. In other cases, the signals from the nerves are never sent. Either situation is incredibly dangerous for many reasons, especially in children.

Putting you hand on a hot stove burns; you would draw your hand away quickly. A sufferer of CI would not know to remove their hand and therefore risk serious burns. When an incessant pain in your eyes starts to become a bother, you would go to the doctor and receive treatment. A patient with CI would not be aware there was foreign body in the eye and risk serious eye damage. Because of their inability to feel pain, a child with CI often suffers from oral damage, usually in the form of fractured bones or biting the tip of their tongue off. Teething children with CI can cause permanent damage to their body by chewing on a finger or arm for an extended period of time. Though the dangers for a patient with CI decrease as age increases, the patient’s life will never be safe.

CI is not accompanied with any birth abnormalities, nor any physical deformation. Diagnosing the disorder can be a long, hard process. Since Congenital Insensitivity to pain is rare disease, many doctors have never heard of it and most have never seen it. The incidents that arise from CI are often treated separately and misdiagnosed; it takes a doctor who knows the patient’s history and has heard of the syndrome to determine the patient has CI.

CI is sometimes, though rarely, accompanied with mental retardation or corneal reflex. Corneal reflex is the rapid blinking of someone’s eye in order to protect the vital organ from foreign bodies. When these disorders are detected, the patient’s doctor will often try to treat these disorders, instead of finding the underlying reason.

Even though the causes of the disorder are known in depth, a consistent treatment has not been found. The limited number of cases in the world has also contributed to the little availability of a proven treatment. Though never normal, people with CI are more likely to become aware of probable danger as they grow older. They may never lead a normal life, but with help they can come close.