fucking ow

[pauraque_bk]

Still working the toothache remedies, and also got the dentist to score me some vicodin. I wonder why tooth pain gets so blindingly intense... what's the evolutionary value there? In the absence of modern dentistry wouldn't it just be a source of disabling pain for tons of the population? All the time in egyptology you hear about mummies with severely decayed and abcessed teeth (partly because of the environment; sand would get in their food and cause dental wear and tear), which boggles my mind. I'd rather have them all pulled out than that, though the prospect of having damaged teeth extracted without anesthesia is a bit daunting.

Maybe proximity to the face/brain/"self" makes it seem worse than it is? I don't know. God fucking damn it though.

Comments

[pauraque]

Maybe I missed a day in school, but I'm not sure I understand why SEVERE pain is necessary. Pain alerts you to a problem -- good! Pain itself preventing you from doing anything about the problem... seems bad?

[skywaterblue.livejournal.com]

TBH I always thought that was a pretty dumb explanation for pain. Surely we feel severe pain because having your body getting torn up is going to feel bad as a consequence of having a sense of touch, not solely because it's some sort of brain message about how bad it is? This is why I think we can't feel our organs very well, and our brains not at all: because you don't use your pancreas to feel a rock.

[pauraque]

Mm, true, there are a lot of severe medical problems that cause no pain (at least not until it's far too late). Though it seems sensible to have pain to alert you to, say, bending your finger back too far, or touching fire -- that's an actual helpful warning that stops you from accidental injury. Then again, that sort of warning pain isn't conscious, I think it stops at the spinal cord or something.

Maybe I'll read a book about it when I'm not in a haze of drugs and ow.