“PAIN IS A GIFT” So said a doctor studying 13-year-old Ashlyn Blocker. Ashlyn has a rare genetic mutation that prevents her from feeling pain. At birth she didn’t cry. As a child, she ran around for two days on a broken ankle. She has put her hands on a hot machine and burned the flesh off. And she has reached into boiling water to retrieve a dropped spoon. “Everyone in my class asks me about it, and I say, ‘I can feel pressure, but I can’t feel pain.’ Pain! I cannot feel it!”(Heckert, 2010).

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