Dissecting Low Pain Tolerance

On another note, I was able to keep from passing out from low-pain-tolerance shock when I hit my knee today, by sitting down and inhaling a banana before the "pain" could deplete my blood sugar.

I always know when this is about to happen because the "pain" has a distinct feel to it. I keep putting pain in quotations because my brain never EVER thinks it's as bad as my nervous system says it is (and the lack of physical evidence supports my brain, as I think the most I ever got from one of these episodes was a tiny cut). Anyway, the feeling is a kind of sickness/coldness combined with almost a feeling of having the wind knocked out of you but not quite... shallow/difficult breathing. Following this is a short wave of normality, and I've found it is in this period that I must sit and scarf some food, or I move on to phase three (which has happened 3 times before, the last time being nearly a year ago). Symptoms include:

Extreme sickness/nausea, feeling weak, unable to walk, effortful speech, shaking, paleness/claminess, loss of vision, and disorientation (the last time it happened I forgot where I was for a minute).

But this time, I beat my system!

If I were a real devoted scientist, I would hit myself a few more times to test my theory, and of course, provide one or two more control episodes. But I guess I'm not that hardcore. That, and I hate feeling sick. The rest I can deal with OK as long as I'm not in some awkward public situation (which has been 2/3 previous times). This time I was in my own house.

I've also found that this tends to happen when I haven't eaten in a while. In fact, the past 2 episodes I can remember, it had been 5 hours since I'd had something to eat (once right before my lunch break, and once right before I was to get off work). The first time it happened I was closing up shop, but I can't remember how long it'd been since I'd munched. I consider the first time to be my trigger experience, a cut from a deli slicer, which made every smaller injury seem to my CNS like a life-or-death situation. This time, it happened coming back from my morning run, and I don't eat breakfast until after I run, so I'd been going off nothing but water for more than 8 hours at that point.

But as I said before, I beat it this time! I didn't progress past phase 2, so go me.

I will just have to carry a banana with me wherever I go.