View Full Version : Phantom Pain
maryonwheels46
11-10-2003, 06:59 PM
Can anyone tell me their difinition of phantom pain? I know if you loose your leg you still feel it. So, does that mean when your paralized that your pain is all in your mind? Help
Mary Sibley
David Berg
11-10-2003, 08:07 PM
Mary,
Phantom pain is pain someone feels when, as you said, someone loses part of their body and still feels pain as if it is still there. In some cases where the brain's map of the body (sometimes called the 'neuromatrix') gets messed up, a person can even feel pain in 'faux' parts of the body, such as a third arm that never existed. In any case, phantom pain is real, even if it is 'all in their mind.'
When someone has an SCI, pain can easily happen in areas of the body that don't have normal sensation and this sounds like what you're talking about. This happens because there's an incomplete injury to the sensory nerves that's causing what messages are reaching the brain to get so messed up that they're all 'translated' into pain signals.
Does this sound like what you have going on?
My definition of phantom pain:
Illusion of sense censored Westie pseudo science about "phantom" stuff,
pretending energetic magic systems do not exist, also do not still aim for where a limb previous was,
and ignoring that pain is transferable also via magic energetic human systems.
calico
11-11-2003, 07:24 AM
Mary, one of the most interesting books I ever read about pain, phantom pain, and the brain is called "Phantoms in the Brain". I lent it to someone (mistake!) and never got it back but it was written by a fellow with a middle-eastern name who was a researcher at a San Diego university.
I believe I ordered it at Amazon. I'd recommend it for anyone interested in pain, and phantom pain in particular.
Calico
duramater
11-11-2003, 08:11 AM
Mary,
David is describing something I have seen many times in patients. For some people with paralysis and generally no feeling below their injury, there is still sensations at the surface of the skin, that cause unbelievable perception of pain. It does not matter where or how you label it, your pain is your pain and as a practitioner I have to listen and observe and act accordingly. Sadly, this is often frustrating and sometimes there is little that can be done medically or otherwise. I hate that. The best defense is to develop a concrete way to describe your pain, so that someone with patience and knowledge can address it. Easier said than done I know.
Best Wishes,
Mary
Phantom pain - Casper the friendly ghost's backache.
Alan
"Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?"
duramater
11-11-2003, 06:26 PM
ALAN,
Hee Hee Hee....
Mary
dejerine
11-12-2003, 04:33 AM
Like a lot of premature, promising "cures" there were many reports that opening the skull and stimulating the MOTOR cortex stopped CP. However, Canavero in Italy was honest enough to report a patient in which this created the imagination that a third arm, on the left side, was created, which had even more terrible CP than before the stimulation of the motor cortex (which sits just in front of the sensory cortex). This report by Canavero was brave indeed, and certainly slowed some of the small series promising universal cure.