A teenager can stick her hand in boiling water and step on nails without feeling pain due to rare genetic disorder only a few hundred people have.
The now-18-year-old was just a toddler when she ripped off two of her fingernails with her teeth, forcing her parents to wrap her hands in cloth.
In elementary school, she tore out five of her baby teeth because she wanted to be visited by the Tooth Fairy. Instead of money, she got a gum infection and needed antibiotics.
And in high school, she didn’t realize she had stepped on a rusty nail until her sock was soaked with blood.
The young woman was diagnosed at age four with congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP), a genetic condition suffered by a handful of Americans and only a few hundred people worldwide.
Her pain receptors aren’t synced up to her brain properly. So while she can still feel hunger pangs and similar sensations, she can ‘grab things quickly out of fire,’ and the fingertips on her right hand are so scarred that only two fingers have prints.
The teen, who held an anonymous Ask Me Anything (AMA) thread on Reddit, said while ‘getting hurt doesn’t scare me,’ she is ‘terrified’ the condition will lead her to ignore serious issues like internal bleeding or organ failure.
An 18-year-old woman on Reddit detailed her experience living with a rare condition that leaves her unable to feel pain (stock image)
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She said: ‘I’ve never once felt that pit or drop in my stomach that some of my friends describe when seeing injuries. Gore is an interesting but neutral topic to me.
‘I do get worried when I think something is potentially lethal, or could permanently disable me.’
CIP is caused by a genetic mutation that prevents the body from transmitting pain signals.
Tests the Reddit user received as a child revealed a mutation in her PRDM12 gene, which helps form nerve cells that normally help the body sense pain.
Nerve endings called nociceptors end up being either underdeveloped or unresponsive to pain signals.
The Reddit user said: ‘Give me a paper cut on one hand and chop off a finger on the other, and I wouldn’t be able to tell you which “hurts” worse if my eyes were closed. I would just tell you that my finger is missing.’
Along with pain, she also has trouble regulating her body temperature, which kept her from playing sports as a child or spending time outside during the summer.
She said: ‘I can’t feel when hot or cold temperature’s get painful, but I still feel my body shake and my skin get all bumpy when it’s chilly and I very much don’t like it.’
Also called congenital analgesia or congenital indifference to pain, CIP is so rare that less than 100 cases have been recorded in the US.
Though she doesn’t feel pain, the Reddit user still feels sensations like muscle aches and nausea.
She said: ‘Soreness is also a source of discomfort that I feel and deeply dislike. I can feel the muscles inside my body moving slower than usual and the sensation is like trying to push my limbs through tar.
‘I can tell when I’m nauseous and about to throw up because my mouth waters and my stomach feels tense, but I don’t think I actually feel nausea.’
‘Same with headaches. I can tell when I have a headache because my forehead feels tight…and my vision gets weird, but I can’t feel the actual pain inside – I just know that it’s a sign to take aspirin.’
Jo Cameron (left), from Scotland, has led a virtually pain-free life due to a rare genetic mutation similar to the unnamed Reddit user. Mrs Cameron – pictured right with her children and husband Jim on her daughter’s Graduation Day – did not realize her case was unusual until she was 65
The woman noted her parents were protective to keep her from hurting herself and taught her to be ‘overly cautious and always attentive’ to injuries.
She said: ‘I was definitely less afraid of things as a child. I didn’t grasp the way my disorder left me more vulnerable to injuries than most people. All I knew is that certain things didn’t affect me the way it did with other people, and I enjoyed it.
‘I was lucky in the fact that, as I grew older, my parents did a good job teaching me to pay attention to my body when I’m hurt.
‘My parents have had to deal with my horror show for 18 years and it never gets easier, for them or for me. They’re very loving though, and they’ve never failed to react with my best interest in mind. I got really lucky having them as parents.’
While she said there are no positives of the condition, she does use it to her advantage occasionally. The teen already has one tattoo and plans to get more, and she is ‘undefeated’ in games with her brothers like Bloody Knuckles.
She said: ‘I wouldn’t say I hate my disorder or that I live in constant fear; I just have to be twice as attentive to my body and get regular scans/tests done to make sure my organs are still working.
‘If I could hypothetically choose to be cured of CIP and feel things normally, I think I’d turn it down. I do wish I could feel internal pain, though. That seems really useful.’
