The dentist checks with the usual question, “are you numb?” and you say yes, because your lip feels thick and your cheek feels far away, and every visual sign of numbness is present. Then the drill starts, or the needle goes in for the extraction, and you feel all of it. Not pressure. Pain, sharp and specific, arriving right on schedule as if the injection never happened at all.
If you are neurocomplex and/or have one of the Ehlers-Danlos syndromes, this scene may be uncomfortably familiar. It isn’t in your head, and it isn’t a low pain tolerance. It’s a documented, if still poorly understood, feature of having connective tissue that doesn’t behave the way most medical training assumes it will.
This has a name, and it’s more common than you’d think
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