On Tue, 30 May 2006 04:41:30 -0700, Carmen wrote
(in article .com>):

> My husband is an amputee for a different reason, and phantom
> limb pain is *not* fun. Imagine feeling like your foot is horribly
> mangled and cut up - after it's gone. It's not an easy type of pain to
> manage.
>

I have no experience with this, so take what I write with that in
mind.

Have you read "Phantoms in the Brain" by V. S. Ramachandran? In it,
he discusses some ways to address phantom limb pain. The book is
about much more than that, though. I found it a very interesting
exposition about what is known about how brains work, as well as what
is not known.

--
Jerry Randal Bauer

Jerry Bauer wrote:
> On Tue, 30 May 2006 04:41:30 -0700, Carmen wrote
> (in article .com>):
>
> > My husband is an amputee for a different reason, and phantom
> > limb pain is *not* fun. Imagine feeling like your foot is horribly
> > mangled and cut up - after it's gone. It's not an easy type of pain to
> > manage.
> >
>
> I have no experience with this, so take what I write with that in
> mind.
>
> Have you read "Phantoms in the Brain" by V. S. Ramachandran? In it,
> he discusses some ways to address phantom limb pain. The book is
> about much more than that, though. I found it a very interesting
> exposition about what is known about how brains work, as well as what
> is not known.

No, but it looks interesting. Thank you for recommending it. We're
lucky in that my DH's doctors (all military) are aware of the
syndrome(s) as being physiological as opposed to psychiatric disorders.
Amputees are somewhat more common around military hospitals than they
used to be, especially teaching hospitals like Walter Reed. They also
tried a technique to avert the development of the syndromes in the
first place. The technique involved batheing the main nerve bundle in
the arm (it was a left hand amputation) with anesthetic before, during
and for several days after the surgery in an attempt to prevent the
traumatized nerves from setting up a cyclic pattern with the brain.
For the first month post-surgery it seemed to have worked, but then it
showed its ugly face. They still get max credit for their efforts to
try and avert it though. :-)

Once again, thank you for the steer.
Take care,
Carmen