How do I feel?

I have a new work colleague who seems very nice if a little direct. Within about 3 hours of meeting me she said "so can you feel your legs at all then?". I just stared at her a second, coughed, spluttered and then went, "er, well, ramble ramble ramble". On the one hand I'm not surprised at what people say but I am taken aback at their directness sometimes. Perhaps its just me, but I like a bit of a social preamble before I ask too many questions, or rather I like people to volunteer or share personal information.

Anyway it got me thinking, I wonder what people think? I've realised that general thinking has it that once you have a SCI through whatever cause, that's it, you don't feel anything at all. See a previous posting here. But that's just not true, so how would I describe my own physical feelings? Firstly everyone seems different, we get so many crazy neurological messages bouncing around that everyone's body interprets it differently. So on an average day I usually get some or all of the following sensations.

Firstly the general feeling is like you've just had a filling at the dentist. The anesthesia is just starting to wear off a bit so you have that bit of feeling coming back. Its not much but just a bit. Know what I mean? If you kicked me Id know about it, but you could tattoo the whole of the Liverpool football team on my bum and I wouldn't be able to tell. Then I have lots of little muscle spasms. The big ones don't happen too much, but I get this thing whereby I feel like I'm being flicked by a rubber band all round my legs, ping, ping, ping, and if I look carefully I can see the muscles doing their own thing sometimes. I have a very irritating sensation mostly confined to my right leg which feels like I have a drill inside my knee and quite often I feel as if my whole leg is vibrating only its not. Drives me nuts! I have a general feeling that someone has come along with a sword and sliced me in half, the bottom bit doesn't feel connected with the top. The worst sensation is that I often feel as if I have spiders running up and down my legs, which makes me almost physically jump, and finally I have a lot of pain around my backside and lower back area. I guess its neurological pain in that it feels like the dentist again. Its very much that cold pain sensation you get when the dentist prods a nerve only I have it nearly constantly and its very very intense at times.

So there we have it. Without sounding ungrateful a lot of the time I do wish I couldn't feel anything, I think life would be a lot easier.