Question:
I heard that organs CAN'T FEEL PAIN!

I was just reading about Carnie Wilson's surgery and her surgeons said that, "Another important point for people to know is that the insides of the human body do not sense pain...they can sense like a pulling or burning...if it was possible to get inside the body without causing pain, and to cut a piece of bowel, you would have no sensation of that pain...the pain of the surgery is the pain of the incision-not what was done inside." My whole question is...is this true? If so, what makes this surgery any more painful than a c-section or other types of surgery where the skin is incised (hmm, I think I made up a word there...). I mean, logically, if our organs can't feel pain, then why do we get tummy aches or angina? But if what the doctor says is true...grrrr. I hope you all understand what I'm trying to ask without trivializing the pain all the post-ops felt from their surgeries. I'm just wondering. BTW, the site I got that info from is http://www.spotlighthealth.com/morbid_obesity/carnies_story/cws_trans_the_bypass.html This should take you to the exact page I was reading-it's toward the middle-end of the transcript.    — jenn_jenn (posted on July 1, 2003)

June 30, 2003
As far as I know, you and Carine's Doctor are right! Speaking from my c-section experience...the pain you feel isn't like a specific pain of "Oh my uterus hurts". What hurts are the muscles and skin and nerves that were cut. As they heal, just like if you pull to hard on a cut it will hurt, the same concept goes for your tummy. For example, when you have a "stomach" ache, you feel it like an ache in one area and assume its your stomach. It could actually be gas trapped outside the tummy or something else. You don't actually feel the pain in your tummy. How then do I explain having a "Stomach" ache and feeling pain in the stomach? Its from the pressure of a bloated stomach pushing against other parts of your system. Causing a kind of all over pain. So in short...you'll feel pain from muscles meaning, nerves healing, skin healing etc. but your tummy won't actually feel any pain. Did you know when brain surgery is preformed no pain meds are needed inside the brain? Why? Becuase it feels no pain. The only drugs needed are for cutting open the skin! Look it up!
   — Renee B.

June 30, 2003
He is right...pain receptors are at the skin level. Which is why a favorite torture of the middle ages was to disembowled someone while they were alive, string the bowels out and set fire to their intestines. They couldn't feel any pain, but they sure as heck knew they weren't going to survive either. And people say we, as a human race, haven't made any progress....
   — merri B.

July 1, 2003
I am not so sure about organs not feeling pain. My experience was that after my surgery my insides were very sore. More than the incision. I had open and 53 staples. I know my insides felt sore for a very long time. I know that my surgeron handled my insides, checking things out, making sure no turmors, etc and they did a liver bio, so whether or not organs really feel pain is questionable to me.
   — imaginec

July 1, 2003
Tell that to my kidney stones!!!! :-)
   — Robert L.

July 1, 2003
If organs could feel, you'd know where your food was at any given moment. Believe me, you don't WANT your organs to feel! lol As mentioned before, it's muscles and nerves, not the organs themselves. As for stones and such, the muscles and valves that make things move through the system send pain messages when something hard and abnormal tries to move through. Personally, my surgery wasn't all that painful. It's the coughing and sneezing that hurts like heck! ;)
   — ladyphy

July 1, 2003
Another reason people feel so much pain from some surgeries is that the doctors must inflate the abdominal cavity with air so that they can see what they're doing, especially with a lap procedure. All that extra air in there is extremely painful! I had to have a lower GI done last year, and they had to inflate my GI tract; when they shot that air in me, I thought I was gonna come off the table! I knew that the brain felt no pain (thanks to the movie "Hannibal") but I didn't know about the other organs.
   — Moysa B.

July 1, 2003
When I went in for my reconstructive plastic surgery, I told the anesthesiologist that I didn't want to wake up w/ the terrible pain that I had immediately after my lap RNY. He said "Don't worry, this will be different... there's a visceral pain associated w/ rearranging your insides, and you won't have that with this surgery (meaning my Lower body lift and breast lift). For whatever reason, he was right. Waking up was WAY less painful than my lap RNY, even though I had incisions all around my body and 9 hours of surgery.
   — mom2jtx3

July 1, 2003
The reason a C-section hurts so bad, is because muscles are cut, and muscles DO feel pain. I've had 3 c-sections, a tubal, and a hernia repair, and a Lap RNY, and the c-sections were MUCH, MUCH more painful than my other 3 surgeries.
   — Diana L.