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We always complained about pain, we wished to live without it like the British doctor Paul Brand, whose story seems strange, it is true that he loved his profession, but he followed his passion, bringing him to what he reached, the expression may seem consuming, but this is the reality, he had a question about pain, and he worked hard to find the answer.
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In 1946, Dr. Robert Cochran, as the supervisor of leprosy work in southern India, arrives in London to attract a young surgeon to assist him, and Paul liked him and wanted to accompany him, which corresponded to the desire of Paul's mother, who dreamed that her son would return to India, where he grew up young, which Dr. Cochran helped after he convinced the Central Committee of War Medicine, which is responsible for commissioning, to accompany Paul to India instead of conscripting him.
In 1947, our owner arrives at the Qingalbot Leprosy colony in the Indian city of Chennai, at a time when scientific research on leprosy was still juicy in its infancy.
A round of sadness, this is the fitting description of what he did upon arrival after seeing an unprecedented number of amputated hands, claw-like arms, stiff protruding fingers, and fingers bent downwards against the palms of the hand embedded in nails like claws.
His host Kuchran takes him after the inspection tour to show him the knitting workshop in which he entertains his time, and there he sees a boy from the workers dripping his blood on the fabric that spins him, so he approaches him to find that his finger is horribly cut, and that his wound is frighteningly rotten, asking him: Do you not feel what is wrong with you? The boy replied carelessly that he did not feel the wounds or any pain in the first place.
He wonders what he saw, in every fingertip there are more than 20,<> pain sensors, how did they all become so numb, with such a severe wound? How could the bones of this boy not scream and push him into pain? And how come there is not a single orthopedic doctor in a leprosy colony even though this disease destroys bone function more than polio or any other disease does?
Pain is our first doctor, he is the one who warns us and directs us to the right steps to deal with injuries, but the real dilemma is that pain has become so notoriously in our world that man is too weak to face it, and then people are ignorant of its usefulness.
"I am hers", Paul decides to take on this task, reading all the bone research on leprosy that fell on his hands, to find that the victims of this disease around the world number about 15 million, about a third of whom suffer from destroyed limbs, and he found nothing in common that can explain this phenomenon of rickets except leprosy itself, but how?
He begins the research journey, he forms a team of specialists to re-study everything, and within several months of testing thousands of patients and their sensitivity to pain in different areas of the hand and foot, it is finally noticed that there is a repetitive pattern that can be built upon, as 80% of people with paralysis in the hand were missing the movement of the muscles controlled by the ulnar nerve, and that 40% suffer from paralysis of the forearm muscles supported by the lower part of the median nerve, but the strange thing is that no muscle paralysis was detected supported by the upper part of the nerve itself, and note that leprosy attacks specific nerves very selectively and with strange compatibility.
These results motivated him to continue his exploration journey, leaving no paper on his way about leprosy without reading it, only to discover the black history of that disease, which was a stigma for those infected with it for illogical or incomprehensible reasons.
He goes through a frustrating experience with the boy Roman, that young man who was visited by leprosy signs and was rejected by his family and feared him before throwing him to the colony, and after several tests and sessions, he found that he did not have leprosy, and Paul restored his confidence in himself again, before the boy returned to his home again.
Roman slept blissfully that night, and in the morning he decides to check his limbs as Paul taught him, to find that the blood covers one of his palms and that a rat has crept into his bed and wounded him without feeling, so he decided to take his revenge the next night, so he took his stick and his luminous lighthouse and sat waiting for the rat in a stimulus, but sleep overcame him to wake up and find his other hand adjacent to the lighthouse, and that a large part of her skin had burned without feeling a grain of pain.
It was so frustrating that he decided to return to Paul, who reassured him, but then asked him the question for which Paul produced a dedicated book, "Dr. Paul, how can I be free without pain?"
Paul goes through a new experience, so he goes out with another patient named "Namo" on a trip to a forest carrying a heat lamp, and this young man did not feel the insulating material falling from the lighting device that he was carrying until he was surprised when looking at his hands that his skin had burned, Paul asks him: Namo, does it hurt? To which the little one replies: You know it doesn't hurt me, I suffer in my mind, because I can't suffer with my body.
Paul knew the problem, and after years and years of research and study he discovered what he was looking for, leprosy does not cause rickets and does not fall limbs, but it is a side effect of the lack of pain, as this disease affects this feeling, and then the lack of a natural alarm that tells us when to stop and to what extent it allows us to move.
Paul can't find a truer example of his theory than the story of the famous American player Bob Gross, whose team started an important game before his ankle injury recovered, so the team doctor decides to inject him with a strong markin analgesic so that he does not feel pain.
The match starts and the professional player does not feel any pain in his injured ankle when pressed, nor does he feel his injury turning into a fracture that ends his sporting life minutes after the Marcin injection.
What happened was that the doctor put Gross in a state of painlessness with his injury, and the warning system was out of coverage.
Brand's long journey with leprosy patients was his first inspiration to understand the centrality of pain and its importance to our bodies, especially when he experienced the same problem with pre-penicillin diabetics and those with congenital pain insensitivity.
Just like Kataya, the little girl with this genetic defect due to the lack of pain, she once came to him completely deformed without having any disease, her ankle joint was dislocated from her leg after she prejudiced him a lot without limping, the limp puts the foot in a position to protect her from compounding the injury, but Kataya's body did not know what her leg was going through, so he did not intervene.
Paul examines her and does not find any significant defect, even leprosy did not have any signs on the body of the four-year-old girl, but the syndrome of lack of pain was enough to destroy the boys, so it did not pass 7 years until she lost her legs through amputation, due to the continuous pressure on them from the ulcers and fractures that the girl does not care about, as well as the fractures and deformities of her arms, and the rupture of her tongue, which she chewed in her nervous attacks caused by a complete psychological breakdown, all of which led her parents to call her "metamorphosis" , but it was not a monstrosity, but a true metaphor of painless life.
A larynx that does not feel any tingling will not release the cough reflex that releases phlegm from the lungs into the pharynx, which never coughs at risk of pneumonia, who does not blink may become blind, and whose movement does not change while walking to rest his foot may lose it completely.
Paul has finally discovered that pain is our first doctor, who warns us and guides us to the right steps to deal with injuries, but the real dilemma is that pain has become so notoriously in our world that man is too weak to face it, and then people are ignorant of its usefulness.
Ignorance of this central place of pain makes weak human beings at the extreme fragility, who surrender to doctors like lab rats without knowing that they are partners in the treatment journey like doctors, so Paul produces his book "The Gift of Pain", to tell us that pain is not the enemy, but an ally that informs us of the real danger, or as Paul himself said to one of the sufferers - in comparison with a leprosy patient - "I thank pain. It prevents you from hurting your fingers."