CIP is a technical term that stands for Congenital Insensitivity to Pain and classified as peripheral neuropathy. Peripheral neuropathy affects your nerves. This disease is a rare condition that leaves sufferers without the ability to feel the pain. It might seem like a divine blessing for few people, going through life without being sensitive to damages our body takes.
In general terms, pain is a major health concern. Pain even gives us an innate motivation to protect ourselves from events that damage our body in any way. It simultaneously encourages us to avoid incidents in the future that come to our bodies as a problem. On the other hand, babies who are born with this rare condition known as CIP are known to damage themselves unintentionally by doing things like chewing their cheeks, tongue, and even hands. Babies born with this rare condition even scratch their eyes to the point of blindness.
As a person grows up with this condition, several orthopaedic complications start to arise, such as body and bone deformities from untreated fractures. The people also have a universal joint problem called Charcot Join. People who suffer through CIP report the inability to smell, and the condition is known as anosmia. The stimulus of pain is quite essential to life. In other words, the ability to feel the pains is also a gift.
What about the parents of such kids born with this decease
For those parents who have their baby affected by this rare condition known as CIP, there is help available out there. Tara Blocker, who is a mother of Ashlyn Blocker, a CIP patient, founded a camp “Painless but Hopeful” in 2011 intending to bring together patients and families living with this rare condition. The ultimate aim is to bring awareness about the rare disease. This camp by Tara Blocker also gives crucial resources, knowledge, and information by gathering parents together and sharing their common problems and solutions.
