I could never answer the dentist when he asked me whether I wanted an injection against the pain I was going to suffer momentarily when he’d started drilling into my jaw. How did I know? Was it going to be really bad? Was it going to go on for a long time? What is a ‘long time’?

I’ve been asking myself recently how much pain a person can take? Before you brake down? Whether there is ‘pain’ that is worse than ‘ordinary’ pain – if there is such as thing?

There is pain I experienced over the past 3-4 years I didn’t know existed. I’ve seen Padraig suffer pain I didn’t know anyone could survive. I’ve heard people inflicting pain on others, with their words, that nearly broke them into pieces.

Pádraig is fighting the pain and overcoming it. To breathe. To eat. To drink. To move.

To see him improving every day, trying so hard is a testimony to the instinct and the will of survival. He has been doing new exercises: moving his head, moving his toes and heels up and down, moving his arm up sideways, moving his hips right and left when standing, moving his upper body forward and back up, using his voice. He is doing better with all of these every day. I wonder what his ‘pain threshold’ is, how it compares to mine, when I think I’m reaching my limits.

One thing is for sure: I won’t be asking for an injection next time I’ll go to the dentist.

PS: Found a website today called Thinking Toys with amazing stuff for all sorts of gadgets to help with speech, cognition, swallowing and more. Worth looking at.