Phantom Pain

Over the years I heard about amputees still being able to feel the body parts that are no longer there. I always thought that must be weird. Well now I know first hand that it is a very real phenomenon.

There are two parts to these phantom feelings I experience. The first being I can feel my foot, there is no pain involved. I just have the sensation that it is still there. And sometimes I want to use my imaginary foot. I forget it doesn’t exist.

Yesterday I was sitting on the edge of my bed and my dog Kitsu came over and was being a pain in the butt so tried to nudge him away with my imaginary foot. It didn’t work! My dog just looked at me puzzled as to why I was waving my stump around in the air. I found myself laughing at myself.

This type of phantom foot doesn’t bother me and I usually find it amusing.

The type that does bother me and bothers me tremendously is when I feel pain in my imaginary foot. It’s bad enough that I have real pain in my stump and sometimes excruciating pain but to have pain in a body part that no longer exists is just plain wrong.

There are times when the pain in my imaginary foot is worse than the pain in my stump and that drives me crazy. There’s nothing I can do about this. My doctor says that for some people this phenomenon goes away in a few weeks, others months and still others it never goes away. I sure as hell hope I’m in the few weeks category.