Hey! Have you ever wondered what a residual limb feels like?
Well, I can tell you what one feels like because I have one right here.
This is my above-knee residual limb, or stump, as you might call it, or nub, as you might call it.
There are a bunch of words; you can use whatever words you want. None of them really bother me;
whatever makes you feel good.
Anyway so, a lot of people want to know what it feels like to touch a residual limb,
and I think this question is really interesting because
it's kind of hard to answer it's like what does it feel like to touch your leg
and it just feels like touching your leg so I touch my leg
and it feels like touching my leg. But there are some things about a residual limb that feels different from a regular leg
so for example I still have some internal sutures from my recent surgery on my residual limb
and so when I run my hand along the scar line I can feel all these little bumps under the skin
and those bumps are the internal sutures that have not yet dissolved.
I had surgery on my residual limb four and a half weeks ago and so those bumps are still there but they will resolve over time.
One really interesting thing is if I rub my finger back and forth across my residual limb like this
perpendicular to the scar there's a abrupt sensation change. What it feels like is that
it's going from the back and then the front so I'm touching the back and then the front like this.
And the reason for that is because of the way that sensation is wired in your body so these
nerves here are for what in my brain map considers the back of my leg and then the nerves that go
here and end are for what my brain map considers the front of my leg. And so when I rub my fingers
across my residual limb scar like this it feels like there's an abrupt change
going from the front of my residual limb to the back of my residual limb.
And when I run my hand along the scar line like this it's sort of like uh it's extra sensitive,
kind of tickly. Like I feel like maybe if somebody else were doing it it might tickle
but I'm doing it and I can't tickle myself if you squeeze my leg it's relatively firm
it's actually firmer than my actual legs I got you know a little bit of fat right here which
I don't have here. To be honest it's kind of like squishing a boob with a bone in it or maybe like a
butt with a bone in it and I can I can feel the bone so if I press around here with my fingers
I feel the bone in there. When I use the muscles of my residual limb and I move like this,
that is bending my knee, and extending, bending and extending, it kind of feels crampy there's like a
a cramp sort of happening up in here but it's not really uncomfortable. It's just kind of something
that's there. And then when I do this you might be able to see like a little pop happen right there
There are some muscles that are attached to the end of my femur, but then there are
some muscles that are just over the end of my femur, and what I'm feeling when I do this is
my muscle rolling over the end of my femur. Some of the areas of my suture line are still a little
bit uncomfortable like right here when I touch my suture line it feels like a little bit of a
burning sort of um sunburn sensation, but it's not anything that's not tolerable obviously
because I'm touching my limb here and then over here the same thing it's really super sensitive.
Like ,uh kind of kind of like a sunburn feeling when I rub my hands on it. Here feels normal
just feels like a thigh and there feels normal it just feels like I'm touching the back of my
thigh. That feeling right there totally identical and that feeling right there totally identical.
So most of the weird sensation is on the suture line and that is what it
feels like to touch my own residual limb. Thanks for watching happy touching bye.
Captioned by Steven