#allodynia

[spiderversegf]

chronic pain is so weird. i wake up and it hurts. i take a shower and the water hurts my skin. i sleep on my back and it hurts my ribs. i sleep on my stomach and it hurts my ribs. i sleep on my side and it hurts my ribs. i don’t sleep. it hurts. someone rubs my back and my skin stings. the knuckles of my fingers ache no matter what i do. i roll over on the couch. my ribs try to rip their way out of my body. i sleep i wake i love i ache.

[webkinzpossum]

i’m a medical mystery

[wonderifshelikesroses]

Friendly reminder that when a doctor asks you how much pain you’re in on a scale of 1-10, they’re assuming that your 0 is actually no pain, not the baseline you’ve gotten used to.

[amplified-pain-culture-is]

AMPS culture is having to explain to someone that the lightest touch hurts because I have Allodynia. AMPS culture is chronic fatigue making you unable to hang out with friends. AMPS culture is telling yourself you are faking it, or not sick enough.

.

[transsexula]

Me, chronically ill, doesnt know what allodynia is: Heeey, you know that shitty feeling when you like, gently scratch an itch and suddenly that whole area is on fire and in pain??? Crazy, right?

Boyfriend without chronic illness: .............. what the fuck?

Me: 😃............🫢

[stillfuckingtired]

Having one of those days where my skin feels wrong. Like, sort of allodynia, sort of nerve pain related. But mostly just….skin feels Wrong.

[steampunk-raven]

Imagine my surprise when I learned that showers were NOT supposed to feel like being stabbed ten million times all over your body and that that’s actually just my allodynia and sensory issues

[after-nine-at-the-oasis]

If anybody needs some good news this disability pride month, recently I was at a doctor's appointment where one of my doctors said my allodynia wasn't as bad anymore! I joked "It's on its last legs" AND SHE SAID "Yeah, pretty much"!! :DD. Obviously there's still a hard road ahead but it hasn't left my mind since :). Happy disability pride month y'all <3

[seraphic-sapphic-safehaven]

Was gonna try to start a discussion-type post about allodynia here because I'm mad that 1) my doctors didn't tell me about it and 2) most in the disabled community don't really talk about it either... But I'm too busy sobbing from it because it hurts so much.

My clothes hurt. I'm wearing soft, loose clothes, and it hurts so much. Just BEING hurts. Lying in bed hurts. Breathing hurts. My hair touching me and being attached to my scalp hurts. Typing this post hurts. THE FUCKING AIR AROUND ME TOUCHING MY SKIN HURTS!!!

I want to be able to work so I can make money and create art for fun and dance with my wife and do housework and take care of my cats and plants and go out to have fun and all these things, and I just can't because I am consumed with pain. And there's nothing I can do... nothing. My current meds don't work, I don't have insurance to be able to see a pain management doctor and get pain meds, I don't have the money to pay out of pocket, and I'm just stuck. I'm so tired...

[crps-chronicpain-ptsd]

I trying more than anyone knows

Chronic pain problems •

[pastafossa]

so i've asked briefcasejuice about this already but i'd also like your take too - since you're part of the daredevil tumblr fandom council and all ...

I'm writing this scene and one of my ocs asks matt if he can handle spicy food and i wanted him to explain this whole thing about pain receptors in his mouth being "sensitive"... and how he hated pineapple because of the bromelain...(the substance that breaks up the protein in your mouth, that's why it's tingly)

and then my oc asks about like regular "body" pain since touch is after all one of the senses of his that have been heightened, and he explains something along the lines of even if the feeling of pain is heightened -- his body isn't actually weaker or more sensitive - so while he gets injured like anyone else he feels the pain of those injuries differently (more). over time he has gotten used to it but its still something he's working on as he hurts himself worse with every fight.

WHAT I'M GETTING AT is that i came to @briefcasejuice about this because they're very knowledgeable about matt stuff and comic matt especially, and they told me it did sound pretty accurate - so now i guess i just want to know -

how do you interpret or view matt's sensibility when it comes to pain - and if it came up in TRT (which maybe it did and i forgot oops?) how would you write it out?

and btw - congrats on the mango thing!! what's next on the fruit discovery journey 🤨 (what else can i be shocked that you didn't try)

Ok first of I love the idea of a Daredevil tumblr fandom council, because now I've got the image of all of us gathered solemnly to talk about DD fandom topics and headcanons like

Second off, ooooh this is a good question. I can't remember if I've ever gotten deep into it in TRT, although it'll probably come up eventually. But I absolutely agree with @briefcasejuice, and with your take on it. This seems right, for a couple reasons, including my own experience with pain.

So a lot of this is based on my own issues (and one of the reasons I relate really strongly to Matt's sense of touch, touch starvation, and pain, and when writing generally include him being comforted and going near comatose beneath gentle touch). Without getting too specific, due to chronic pain and health problems, I experience something called allodynia - "pain due to a stimulus that does not normally provoke pain." Basically, my nerves are all spun up to 11 and even light sensation often reads as pain, regardless of whether I'm actually hurt - Matt's comment about 'cotton feels like sandpaper on my skin'? I get that, cause rough fabric's painful to me (another ex: put icy hot on my skin once, just about clawed it off my arm because I was convinced something had gone wrong and it was burning me). And on bad days, even very soft fabrics or, hell, a breeze, any sensation anywhere I have nerves feel like bits of glass grinding into a burn. Best explanation I have for a really bad day. And we know Matt's sense of touch is heightened. So I often think he feels a lot like me, and how you described it feels right.

Everything hurts more, even if you're not being hurt more, and even if your body's strong enough physically to take whatever's being done. Physically, there's no reason his body can't handle cotton sheets, or a food with acid, and God knows the man can take a punch. Functionally, his body is fine. But his nerves don't act that way. They send way more signals than they need to, and sure, this helps if he's trying to use them to his own advantage, but it also means he's left wide open to a far higher degree of pain from stimuli that most of us would consider more minor (pineapple, in this case) along with the pain we all regularly avoid.

Does he mostly block it out? Yes. Especially on a day to day, to the point where he may actually miss smaller injuries because he's focused on tuning out other, larger pains. I know I do - your brain eventually just goes 'oh new baseline and I still need to live so Imma put everything below it into the background so it doesn't stop us doing what we need to'. I hug people, I touch things that are rough, I use hot water with the dishes, and if I focus on it, I remember that it hurts a bit, but I've learned to tune that out for the most part. Much like me, Matt's dealt with this for years, so while he does what he can (soft sheets, avoiding certain foods, wearing certain types of clothes), he's gotten used to a lot of the day to day stuff he can't avoid, though like you said, as the injuries pile up, it just gets worse and worse as that pain stacks. Some of it might be tempered by surges of adrenaline and endorphins (why I theorize he can fight even when injured - tune it out thanks to all the practice, PLUS fighting so ferociously that his body pumps him up until he can ignore it, at least until he crashes afterwards, and crashes hard), but he's definitely feeling it far, far worse.

So I basically think it's likely, especially when pain is stacking, that he's just made a bunch of calculations for his everyday life on what's worth the pain and what isn't - certain foods? No point. Cotton sheets? No point. There is no benefit, and so he comfortably avoids it, whereas going out to fight he generally always sees as worth it since there's a tangible benefit. Those calculations at least are something we all do every day - we decide the pain of a tattoo or working out or that sour candy is worth it cause it gives us something we like. Matt just takes it up to 11. I can absolutely see him taking something like, say, pineapple - tingly and acidic - and not only feeling pain when eating it but also just literally running the mental math and going, 'yeah not worth it' because he's in enough pain day to day thanks to injuries and other things he can't avoid.

In summary: you're right and I headcanon Matt operates much like someone who's been dealing with allodynia for a while, which means he'd feel more pain from stimuli even if it's not hurting him, so he chooses things in his day-to-day to avoid and then just throws himself into the pain on big things and hopes the endorphins and adrenaline will help him tune it out.

LASTLY THANK YOU ON THE MANGO! I cannot BELIEVE I went so long without knowing how fucking delicious they were. New fruits I haven't tried that are on my list now that I realized I need to find if there are MORE DELICIOUS UNKNOWNS LIKE MANGOS: boysenberries, figs, grapefruit, guava, kumquats, passionfruit, papaya, prickly pears, and satsumas!

[iibislintu]

i had an appointment with a neurologist today and it. Was. AWESOME!

first of all, they looked like a young Alison Bechdel, which is always a plus.

then, i learned NAMES for things i'm experiencing. like CHRONIC ALLODYNIA!

AND they put me on a waiting list for MRI because, "well us neurologists are a bit geeky in the sense that the more exact the measurement, the happier we are."

... on the other hand, they were possibly a bit too cheerful when they said, "aaaand as you're young, i want to rule out MS - not that i think you have it - but just in case"

but all in all it was such a positive experience! especially after all the GPs who have been so VAGUE about things.

[rosesandthorns44]

Whelp. This hasn't happened in a while.

Allodynia.

My skin feels sunburnt to the touch, even though it's not.

It's not a searing pain, just enough to be noticeable and uncomfortable.

[wonderifshelikesroses]

Do you ever just….

Let yourself actually feel how much pain you’re in? I don’t know about everyone else, but I spend 99% of my time trying to dissociate from how much pain my body is in just to keep going, but from time to time I sit still in a quiet room and just let myself feel it for a couple minutes.

[waytoomuchanalysis]

So recently it's been cold as fuck in my dorm every night because the heat is disabled since it's Spring but it's not warm out yet

And every night I experience horrible cold allodynia that makes me feel like I have the flu!

[going-to-superhell]

Stop telling people their being over dramatic to pain weather they are just hurt of have hyper sensitivity when it comes to certain things that just set off every fucking pain receptor. And if you do tell someone who is in pain to stop being dramatic I will personally find you, beat the shit out of you and when you show your in pain the only response you’ll get is “stop overreacting it doesn’t hurt that much I barely touched you”