Shared from inMotion | Volume 28, Issue 2 | March/April 2018, Page 38
by Meredith Bower Holt
In January 2006, when I was 29, I lost my left leg below the knee in a car accident. After months in a coma, I awoke to my brain fixating on the last signal from the now-missing limb: being crushed. Twelve years later, I still experience phantom pain – with very specific manifestations. I’ve wakened my husband more than once because my third metatarsal has shooting pain, or my heel is on fire, or my big toe is being crushed. But none of them are there. It’s disorienting and tormenting.
Phantom pain results from psychogenic and physiological (mental and physical) activity and post-amputation changes in the residual limb and the brain. The prevalence of phantom pain in the first two years post-amputation is 65-80 percent; however, severe, chronic phantom pain past the second or third year affects only 5-10 percent of amputees.