Hello, this is Christina Stephens the Amputee OT and today, I'm going to talk to you about phantom pain and phantom sensations.
*machinery and welding sounds*
Ever since I've had my foot amputated, I have been able to feel my foot very clearly. I can feel my toes
down here and my heel, and the bottom on my foot and my ankle.
Before my foot amputation, I had a lot of nerve pain in my foot.
I had a lot of burning feeling in my toes and
shocking stabbing kind of needle feeling and the rest of my foot and now that I've had my foot amputated I
barely feel those at all, but I still do feel those pains, and I feel them in my foot.
Which is weird because I obviously don't have a foot anymore. In my bed with my covers pulled up
I can totally feel like foot as if it's completely there. This, to me, is really
fascinating and interesting because it makes me think about the way the brain works.
The reason amputees feel phantom sensations
and phantom pain in the limb that's no longer there after they've had an amputation is because the map of that limb is still up
in your brain, so you still have a map of your brain or I saw the map in my brain of my left foot,
but my foot is not there, and so my brain does not want-- know what to do with that information
that my foot is not there, so it basically acts as though
my foot is still there. Most amputees experience phantom limb sensation and phantom pains and
some people are really bothered by it because
they don't want to tell anyone about it because they think that if they tell people about it those people will think that
they're totally crazy to feel the foot. That's not there, but
pretty much every amputee
experiences it. So you're not crazy if you feel phantom pains or phantom sensations in a leg that you don't have anymore.
If you're not an amputee it might be similar to your phantom phone
feelings. If you keep your phone in your pocket so much you might actually develop a brain map where your brain says
my phone is in my pocket and
what will happen is that, if you take your phone out of your pocket and put it on the counter, you
will actually feel your phone vibrate when it rings
in your back pocket, even though your phone is not actually in your back pocket.
If you're an amputee and your friends think you're crazy, because you feel phantom pains,
then you can maybe use the cell phone analogy and that might help them. The main things I feel in my
ghost foot are burning in my toes and
I feel a positional sense of my ankle. So I feel like my ankles pointed down sometimes
and I feel like I really really want to rotate and bend my ankle because my ankle kind of feels
stiff and sore like it needs to be rotated and bent, but I can't do that because it's not there anymore.
I mostly feel a lot of
sensation of something being pressed against my ankle on either side, but I can also feel my heel
and I can feel the bottom of my foot.
Before my amputation the bottom of my foot really felt
stiff like the tendons in my foot were--
were tightening up, and I actually still get that feeling now. Thankfully,
the pain that I had in my foot, that was almost unbearable,
now I still feel that pain, but it's dulled significantly. So it's it's now just kind of background noise
or you know a little slight annoyance. It doesn't really bother me so much anymore,
which is something that I'm super thankful for. Another weird thing is that if I press on the bottom of my cast,
I don't feel anything on the bottom of my stump, what I feel is feeling on the back of my calf and
the reason for that is because when they
give you an amputation, they take the back of your calf
and they use your calf muscle as padding to the bottom so my brain for 30 years, has-- has thought
"this is the back of my calf" and
now it's the bottom of my leg but my brain still thinks, "this is the back of my calf."
So I sort of feel like there's an oblivion down there
at the end of my leg. I don't really feel a "bottom" but in actuality, I do feel a bottom.
It's just the back has now been reshaped to be the bottom. I can wiggle my ghost toes at least to me
I feel like I'm wiggling my ghost toes. So I can
wiggle my toes like this and actually
doing it with both feet.
Although it feels a little bit different, but I definitely get the sense of being able to wiggle my toes.
I knew a guy who had an amputation right here at his hip and if he went swimming he could feel his whole leg.
I've heard of some different therapies that people use to try to diminish phantom sensations or phantom pain,
but I haven't really seen any that have a whole lot of evidence backing them up.
So I will probably be doing a little bit of research on that in the future and then maybe
present the research that I have found, but so far things like medication and
counseling and mirror therapy don't seem to have a whole heck of a lot of benefit,
so I'm not really sure how useful they are. As of now, It seems like
phantom pain is something that amputees just have to deal with.
Sometimes that prevents them from being able to do a lot of things my phantom pain is
reduced enough that won't really bother me and my phantom sensations
amuse me and I think they're really interesting. The first time I took a shower,
I tried to stand on this leg that obviously was not going to work thankfully the shower is small
So I tried to stand on it went, "woop!" and put my hand against the wall. I would suggest if you're a new amputee,
definitely getting a shower chair in your shower, and
trying to keep in mind
that you might accidentally forget that you
have no foot on the end of your leg anymore that can be a really huge problem
especially very early on
post-surgery. Since I'm in a rigid cast the chances of me actually hurting my surgical site are pretty low.
I think that's one of the main reasons that my surgeon puts a cast on if you're in a soft dressing and you definitely should
be more careful and make sure that you are more aware of your body.
And I think it's probably going to happen to every amputee. When I first came home from the hospital,
I tried to take off my shoe.
I didn't really try to take off my shoe. I wasn't like "Oh, why would my shoe come off?
I can't get it off." I was more like "Took that shoe off. Oh yeah... Can't take that shoe off.
I'm not wearing a shoe." All right. That's all I have for now, so I'll talk to you guys later. I'm Gonna--
I'm gonna say that twice because I have two endings, so I'm gonna make two videos
Okay, guys. I'll have more youtube videos up later and feel free to ask me questions. Thanks. Bye bye!
*deeper raspy voice* Amputees...
they're creepy.