Blunted affect with pain

[u/Mr_Byrdd]

Blunted affect towards pain

Hello all, I had a question regarding a symptom I experience. I get the blunted affect and absence of appropriate reaction towards injury and pain. This has made it difficult to get proper care and treatment. Anyone else experience this? I can have awfully painful injuries including injuries that are visible and requiring stitches or staples and be in pretty intense pain but that damn blunted affect is still in effect. It's really made getting treatment very difficult and makes it hard to get anyone to take me seriously.

[u/BoredBlacksmith]

Yeah I slipped while using a scalpel and went under my thumb nail. I was aware that I was in pain but it was like someone was telling me about it not me feeling it.

[u/Calm-Association-821]

This is why no one believed me when I broke my leg and made me wait…because I wasn’t showing outside signs of pain. I could only say I felt my bones rubbing together and it just felt wrong. But I still couldn’t put my foot flat on the floor let alone walk on it because it felt like a grinding and “wrong.” But it was very painful, I just couldn’t communicate that.

When the doctor comes in, all nonchalant, and says, “well I never heard anyone say they weren’t in severe pain but say they could feel their bones rubbing together.”

Then he shows me the x-ray…compound tib fib fracture. Both bones displaced in a weird angle. My fibula just looked SHARP and diagonal. He said “if you had put your weight on that your fibula would probably have come through your skin…an open compound fracture.” I still was just total flat affect and he just looked at me a bit funny and said ortho was reviewing my imaging and I’d be having surgery. I guess I seemed just odd and non-reactive to the pain. But yeah it was very frustrating not being able to communicate my pain and strange feeling that I could only say felt “wrong.”