hmmmmmmmmmmm... rant follows article snippet:

Primal, Acute and Easily Duped: Our Sense of Touch

By NATALIE ANGIER p Published: December 8, 2008 - New York Times

(snipped)

Biologically, chronologically, allegorically and delusionally, touch is the mother of all sensory systems. It is an ancient sense in evolution: even the simplest single-celled organisms can feel when something brushes up against them and will respond by nudging closer or pulling away. It is the first sense aroused during a baby’s gestation and the last sense to fade at life’s culmination. Patients in a deep vegetative coma who seem otherwise lost to the world will show skin responsiveness when touched by a nurse.

Like a mother, touch is always hovering somewhere in the perceptual background, often ignored, but indispensable to our sense of safety and sanity. “Touch is so central to what we are, to the feeling of being ourselves, that we almost cannot imagine ourselves without it,” said Chris Dijkerman, a neuropsychologist at the Helmholtz Institute of Utrecht University in the Netherlands. “It’s not like vision, where you close your eyes and you don’t see anything. You can’t do that with touch. It’s always there."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/sc...html?th&emc=th

(note: free registration required to read stuff at the New York Times)

been thinking about this article since yesterday.

the sense of touch is so crucial to our understanding of the world around us, that NUMBNESS becomes an MS symptom which seriously impacts our lives.

yet, since numbness doesn't cause the irritation of spasticity, or the helplessness of vision impairment, or the agony of trigeminal neuralgia, it's often given short shrift and tuned out.

but in terms of daily living, numbness is ever-present, and interferes with the smallest things, from trying to pluck eyebrows, to getting zippers zipped, and hair fixed.

large things become difficult as well, causing burns from the woodstove, dropped dishes, and finger-damage when chopping vegetables...

and never MIND trying to drive, with feet that cannot feel the pedals, and hands that cannot feel the steering wheel (which is why I no longer drive)

anyway, I guess I got a little annoyed with the woman quoted above, who said the sense of touch is always there...

how do we DEAL with life when we can't FEEL things ??