Its just that sometimes is so hard to believe how such ridiculous stimuli can possibly cause painful reactions in some patients while others can manage pain so incredibly.
My last night on call we had a consult for a 9 yo female with a sore throat and severe dysphagia that ended up being a bilateral peritonsillar abscess and required I&D under local anesthesia. During the whole evaluation and procedure the girl was a rockstar. She cooperated with us, followed all the instructions and allowed us to manage it on her bedside.
Did it hurt? Hell yeah! It hurt even before we saw her (she would jolt of pain every time she tried to swallow) And that I&D is certainly no piece of cake. But still, she put up with it, even as tears came running down her cheeks while holding her mother's hand. Man, I was so impressed.
As we were finishing draining, I could see the girl was making her very last effort to keep her shit together to not just shut her mouth and tell us to get the fuck out and stop torturing her.
And then, almost as we were done, the damn mother released the girl's hand from her own and said in a kinda rude tone:
"Honey, don't squeeze so hard. You know, it really hurts!"
