March is teasing me

Yesterday was 72 degrees and sunny. After coming back from Frankfort, where we lobbied state legislators to support single-payer healthcare ("You mean SOCIALIZED healthcare? I have a son, daughter, and son-in-law who are all doctors, and they would not support this. I'm quite frankly surprised that YOU, as future doctors, would support this. I think we'd better end this conversation now, because I am just not going to agree with you." --Representative Draud, (R), Edgewood), I drove around town with the top down and sprawled out at Waterfront Park to do some reading. Today, it's 57 degrees; not quite warm enough to sit outside, but warm enough that I don't feel like working. Tomorrow's high: 46. Come back, spring!

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Since I'm supposed to be studying neuro today, I'll leave you with a neuro fun fact of the day: Pain is a very complex sensation, mediated by a variety of different nerve fiber types and running throughout your brain. It is difficult to treat, but also difficult to measure. Here is one example of a pain scale, on which the average pain of various events has been plotted:

The take-home message of this chart is that labor without anesthesia is second only to amputation of a digit in terms of pain. (The only thing worse than amputation of a digit is causalgia, a sustained burning type of pain related to traumatic injury of a nerve.) That is why drugs are good.