August 2008
I know it's been forever since I updated this part of Cyber-Soup but I finally have something good to talk about here other then the fact I have given up on walking for the moment. I have because of my son, and how he could pull me on top of him and hurt himself or me or both of us. But that will change in time as he gets older. What I am really excited about is the trickling down of something fantastic and the only known cure, yes I said CURE for phantom pain, called Mirror Therapy!
I am so thrilled to be able to update about this Therapy designed to help amputee's Phantom Pains completely go away. If you've been an amputee for twenty-one years like me then you probably accepted that Phantom Pain was just something we amputees have to live with. Well let me tell you that is not true anymore. We are able to retrain our brains, fool them if you will, by using a mirror into making new pathways where the brain thinks the missing limb can move again without pain. This somehow turns off the painful aspect of the Phantom and dramatically reduces the number of Phantom Pain events.
For me it was not until I had the second session that I felt a decrease in the intensity of the pains, and also in the frequency of it happening. After the third session it was definitely noticable. I used to get on a scale of a 1-10, 10 being take me to the hospital, I would get 9's. Kid you not. It was overwhelming, I would cry out in pain when it surprised me and grip my armrests on my wheelchair with a death grip until one or two minutes would pass and it slowly faded away. Whenever I moved the Phantom Leg it would feel like pins and needles coursing through it. Even that has changed, it now just feels like that deep awareness of the limb being there you feel when you have something fall asleep, only BEFORE the pins and needles set in.
Now after two weeks, (six sessions total) I feel so much better! I get pains still, but I expect them to get less after the next few sessions. It's really incredible! But I now have on the same Pain Scale, I am getting 2's and 3's instead of the horrific pains I used to have to endure for like 1-2 minutes, these little aches last about 30 seconds. And instead of getting them between 5-10 times a day it's down to 2-3 and one day last week and today I have gotten ZERO attacks! So as you can imagine I don't say this is a Cure lightly. But since it works for new amputees and it works for someone like me with an old injury I really honestly think every insurance carrier should cover a month or two of intense Mirror Therapy for amputees because no medication touches it, TENS (Transcutaneous Electronic Nerve Stimulator) devices don't touch it so I went into this feeling rather skeptical, only to become a true believer in just a week!
I will be getting some photographs to put here to help you see what is involved in this amazing theraputic application of a full length mirror. But the only problem I see is that you have to put your heart into this giving it your best efforts, you have to LOOK at the missing limb's empty space being filled with the illusion of flesh, and deal with the emotional turmoil that it stirs up. That is not easy by any means, I cried the first night after therapy because it made me long for life before amputation, and I got over it quickly because I lost my leg a long time ago and have long since accepted that loss and embraced life as an amputee. For a newer amputee this will probably be much more difficult, but NOT impossible to deal with. I mention it here because it's important that people be aware of this emotional aspect of the treatment.
I welcome any questions or comments about this page or Mirror Therapy, so if you want to reach me by email by all means please do so. I hope to update this area again soon with photographs so check back and check them out when I get them posted. Thank you for visiting and happy Surfing!
