What if you woke up from deep sleep one morning, and found that the tips of your fingers were gone! Dr. Paul Brand, in his biography “10 Fingers for God,” described this scene when he checked up on some children who had leprosy. After a lot of investigation, he found blood spots leading from the bedside to a hole in the wall. Rats had come in the middle of the night, and nibbled on these tender fingers. The children’s leprosy had damaged their nerves, and therefore they did not have pain, even when the rats were biting and nibbling away.
某个清晨当你从酣睡中醒来，发现你的指尖不翼而飞！Paul Brand医生在他的自传《十指为神》一书中描述了他在检查麻风病患儿时的这种骇人的感觉。经过仔细的搜索，他发现斑斑血迹沿着床边直到墙角鼠洞。午夜时分，老鼠出没，啃噬了那些稚嫩的手指。麻风病损害了这些小孩的神经，当老鼠又啃又咬的时候他们根本不知道疼痛。

Dr. Brand (with Yancey) wrote the book “Pain, the Gift that Nobody wants.” He described pain as a “gift from God,” a concept that might be shocking to many people. But imagine yourself with leprosy, and your nerves are damaged by leprosy, so that you cannot feel pain. Or you have diabetes, and the nerves of your legs are damaged to not sense pain. Or you have been lying on your back for many weeks without changing your position, so that your back is numb, and you do not feel pain. In all these situations, because you have no sense of pain, you could get seriously injured, have infections, and even have parts of your body sloughed off without your even realizing it. Pain is indeed a gift to make us wake up, to escape from harm, or to see a doctor.
Brand 医生和 Yancey先生合写了本书《疼痛，无人想要的礼物》。他把疼痛视为“上帝的礼物”，标题似乎很惊悚。但是试想想，如果你自己患有麻风，你的神经被麻风损坏，你感觉不到疼痛。或者当你患有糖尿病，你腿部神经被破坏，对疼痛毫无知觉。或者你僵卧床上数周不改变姿势，你的背部就会麻木，丧失痛感。凡此种种，因为你感受不到疼痛，你就会受到严重伤害，感染，甚至部分肢体不知不觉中腐烂掉。疼痛这个礼物让我们警觉，让我们规避伤害，或者去求医。

Three times in my life I developed sciatica, the compression of nerves coming from the spine. This was during a time when I had to travel 7 to 8 times a year on international trips, especially to mobilize doctors and nurses to go to China for the medical mission I had helped begin. My neurologist told me that the cause of the sciatica was most likely because I was sitting in a very cramped economy section of the airplane, bent over a laptop trying to clean up many careful notes from numerous meetings. He reminded me that this was the worst position to be in, and advised me in later life to bring a pillow for my back whenever I traveled. So this is why you keep seeing me with a red bag, which is really my support for my back, a pillow camouflaged as a bag. You may even have thought that my laptop was in this funny red bag: it is definitely not a laptop bag.
我有过三次脊椎压迫引起的坐骨神经痛，都发生在我每年不得不的7-8次国际旅行，尤其是在动员医生、护士去中国参加我所帮助启动的医疗服务期间。我的神经科专家告诉我，我的坐骨神经痛主要是因为我坐在狭窄的经济舱，趴在笔记本电脑上清理众多会议的注意要点。他提醒我这是最不好的姿势，建议我在以后的旅行中携带个枕头作为靠背。所以你会经常看到我带有个红色的包，这是我背部的支撑，伪装成包的枕头。你以为我的笔记本电脑就装在这个有趣的红包里：它其实不是电脑包。

During these attacks of sciatica, I had literally daily advice from my kind eager medical mission staff, to see an acupuncturist, surgeon, chiropractor, physical therapist, pain specialist, etc or to use steroids, spinal injections of analgesics, etc. etc. I politely refused all the well intended advice, and settled on total bed rest, with the excruciating pain being my guide as to what painful position to avoid when I was lying down. I took minimal pain medication, but I maximally used pain as an indicator to give me relief and rest. During each of the 3 attacks, after one week or so, the pain gradually subsided, to everyone’s surprise. Basically after these three attacks, and especially later with the help of my little red pillow bag, I have been free of attacks for more than a decade. Pain was clearly a gift for me in this case. And I narrowly escaped the surgeon’s fine hands and scalpels. Dr Brand was right, nobody wants pain, but it is a gift we can use.
坐骨神经痛发作时，我几乎每天都得到我的热心的医疗服务团队伙伴的建议，要我去看针灸师、外科医生、按摩师、理疗师、疼痛治疗专家等等，或者应用激素、椎管注射镇痛药，等等、等等。我婉拒了所有的善意，决定彻底卧床休息，在我躺下的时候剧痛提示我避免引起疼痛的体位。我用了点最小剂量的止痛药物，却最大限度的利用疼痛作为提示我放松和休息的信号。这三次坐骨神经痛的每一次发作期间，让人惊讶的是差不多一周左右，疼痛就逐渐缓解。基本上在这三次发作以后，特别是在后来我的小红枕包的帮助下，坐骨神经痛已经十多年没有发作了。在这种情形下，疼痛毫无疑问是我的礼物。我惊险的躲过了外科医生精巧的手和解剖刀。Brand 医生是对的，没有人想痛，但它是我们有用的礼物。

In fact there are very rare children born with no pain sensation, and they commonly will injure themselves extensively. It was Dr. Brand’s dream to find a way to actually create pain sensation, in order to provide the protection necessary. That is really difficult, since we automatically assume our sensory nerves know what they are doing, and if there is a problem, it is commonly the opposite situation, having too much pain, so we are trying to reduce the sensation, rather than increase it. It is still not possible to create pain sensation. Not many researchers probably think that creating pain is a career path, again a gift that nobody wants. And this genetic disease reminds us that having no pain is actually a curse also, not a blessing.
事实上很少有小孩生而无痛觉，他们往往会时不时的伤到自己。 Brand医生的愿望是重建痛觉，目的是为机体提供必要的保护。 这太难了，我们理所当然的认为感觉神经知道该司何职，一旦遇到问题，它却恰恰相反，疼痛难忍，因此人们想尽力减少这种痛觉，而不是增大它。迄今为止仍然难以创造出痛觉。没有学者会以制造疼痛为业，他们还是认为疼痛是没有人稀罕的礼物。这种遗传病提醒我们没有疼痛其实是诅咒而不是祝福。

Paul Brand was the most gentle doctor that I have ever met. Sometimes we joke that surgeons can be very aggressive, and even abrasive, because they have often to be quick in mind and action. I know this from personal experience, since I abruptly stopped my budding surgery career when I came under the direction of just such a person in my internship year. But here was Dr. Brand, totally against stereotype, carefully attending the wounds of many leprosy patients, cleaning their wounds, or binding their damaged feet. Or advising me about medical missions, in his very British, fatherly and kind manner.
Paul Brand是我遇到的最温和、最亲切的医生。我们有时玩笑说外科医生是很有攻击性的，甚至于粗鲁的，因为他们经常敏于思考，捷于行动。这观点来源于我的切身经历，我实习期间刚好摊上个这样的指导老师，我仓促的终止了我刚刚开始的外科职业生涯。 Brand医生彻底改变常规，精心护理众多麻风病人的伤口，清洗患处，包扎烂脚。以他英伦式的、父亲式的、和蔼的方式给我的医疗服务活动以建议。

When I started my medical mission during my first early retirement, I was anxious to find a medical person who could be my trusted advisor. I had already read books written by Dr. Paul Brand, and from his books I could sense that he was a very sensitive, logical and godly person. His thoughtful book “Fearfully and Wonderfully Made” was a great reminder of the beauty of God’s creation of the human being, and how complex and wonderful the entire design reflected God’s genius. Further, he had discovered, by careful observation and experimentation, that the disfigurement of leprosy was not the direct result of the leprosy disease, but a side effect of the nerve damage and poor pain sensation. This was a revolutionary finding that dramatically altered the management of leprosy, and I was really impressed.
在我第一次退休的早期，在我开始我的医疗服务的时候，我迫切的想要一位医学人士作为我可信赖的顾问。我读过他写的书，从他的书中我可以感受到他是一个敏锐的，有逻辑的而且是信奉上帝的。他的寓意深刻的书《完美制造》是上帝创造的人类的美好的反映，整个设计的复杂和精巧体现了上帝的大能。后来他通过仔细观察和实验，他揭示麻风病的躯体损害不是麻风病直接导致，而是神经损害和痛觉缺失的不良后果。这是一个伟大的发现，极大的改变了麻风病的治疗，也给我很深刻的印象。

I wrote Dr Brand out of the blue, since we did not know each other, and I had nobody even to introduce me to him. So I just took the direct, likely brash route, and simply wrote him. But he readily accepted my request to have him be my mentor, and every year I would fly on a “pilgrimage” to his home, so conveniently Seattle, my mother’s birthplace and our own future home. And every time we met it was just a wonderfully meaningful experience, to meet him, and Mrs. Margaret Brand, also a doctor, who specialized in treating the eyes of leprosy patients.
彼此并不认识，也乏人引荐，我冒昧的写信给他。我唐突的直接写信给他，但他欣然接受了我的请求作为我的顾问。每年我都飞到他家“朝圣”，在方便出行的西雅图，这里是我母亲的出生地，也是我们未来的家。每次去见他都是令人愉快的、意义深远的经历。Margaret Brand太太也是一位医生，擅长于麻风病人眼科的治疗。

Paul was a man of few words, and when I had a question about my mission, he would listen very intently, raise his eyebrows, frown, or have a faint smile of approval. Mainly from these faint gestures and body language, I learned a lot! As I reported what I was doing, he would gently steer me into the right directions, without once having to raise his voice or directly argue with me. Margaret however was much more vocal and was a great counterpoint during this mentoring period. Mentors truly come in all shades, and they are all extremely helpful in different ways! At this point in the story, you might be thinking it strange that my mentors were leprosy specialists, but there is likely a deeper reason.
Paul是个寡言的人，但我医疗服务有疑惑时，他倾听，抬高眉头，皱眉或者轻轻微笑认可。仅从这些细微的姿势和肢体语言，我就领悟到许多。当我汇报时，他轻轻的校正我的方向，从不提高语调或者直接和我辩驳。在请益过程中，Margaret 经常发言，形成了对比。顾问多样，各展其长。这个故事讲到这一点，你会感到好特别，我的顾问居然是一对麻风病专家，这是有深层次原因的。

Ever since I was a child, I have had a fascination with leprosy. My father had many missionary friends, including a Dr. Fraser who was a leprosy specialist. We used to go and visit him on an island especially built for leprosy patients. The beaches there were pristine, since no one really went to visit the island. We had a great time swimming on the beaches, and also visiting with the leprosy patients. I learned not to be scared of the disease nor the patients. These experiences probably helped me in my future calling to medical missions, and helped me focus on leprosy as a fascinating disease.
我还是小孩的时候，我对麻风病非常着迷。我父亲有许多传教士朋友， 其中Fraser 医生就是一个麻风病专家。我们经常去专门为麻风病人开辟的岛上看望他。因为没有人光顾，海滩还很原生态。我们花大把时间在海滩游泳，也去看望麻风病人。我认识到不必害怕麻风病和麻风病人。这些经历可能在我后来呼召去医疗服务中有所帮助，也帮助我关注麻风病，视其为一个让人着迷的疾病。

Leprosy is indeed the prototypical disease that reflects the love of Christ. He reached out to them, He physically touched them at a time when no-one dared to be even close to them, and He healed them. Among the most despised group of people in the world, leprosy patients have, for thousands of years, encountered discrimination and marginalization. But Christ’s model has inspired thousands of medical missionaries to find the sickest, poorest and most neglected of the world, to help them and encourage them. Christ was really the supreme pain doctor. And it is with great joy and pride that I was able to associate for many years with the best human pain doctor ever.
麻风病是一个最能体现基督的爱的疾病。他向他们伸出双臂，接触他们，在那时没有人敢这样做，甚至于没有人敢靠近他们，而基督治愈他们。在世上最被轻视的人群中，麻风病人千百年来遭遇了歧视和边缘化。但是基督的榜样激励成千上万的医学传教士去寻找病情最重的、最贫苦的和被世人最忽视了的麻风病人，帮助他们、鼓励他们。基督才是至高的疼痛医生。我能和最好的人类疼痛医生保持多年联系让我高兴、让我自豪。