This Nurse Knows What Hurts Before You Even Speak

Megan Pohlmann has a rare neurological condition: When someone else cuts themselves, she feels it; when a patient has a headache, her head throbs too. What would life be like with a superpower like that?

- Maureen Seaberg

One night while working the night shift, Megan Pohlmann, 30, scrubbed her hands vigorously, snapped on a pair of blue gloves, and walked into the intensive care unit at St. Louis Children’s Hospital in Missouri, a facility so respected that patients are transported here from around the globe. One baby was very sick and unable to sleep. As Pohlmann stood by his crib, trying to calm him down, her head started throbbing—so hard she found herself wanting to bang it against the wall to stop the pressure. Wow, she recalls saying to herself, I wonder if this baby’s head hurts. And if so, why, because his diagnosis has nothing to do with headaches.

In the morning Pohlmann told the doctors she thought the baby had a severe headache—upon investigation, they found he was experiencing a little-known side effect of the medication he was on. They took him off the drug, and when she saw the child again the following night, he was calm and cooing. He was, she recalls, “a different baby.”