Kathy, a 20-year-old woman, awakens one morning to a tingling, numb sensation covering both of her feet. This has happened to her a number of times throughout the year. In the past, when experiencing this sensation, within a couple of days to a week the numbness would subside, and so she is not too concerned. About a week later, she…
Phantom limb pain first arose during the sixteenth century by a French military surgeon, Ambrose Pare (Weinstein, 1998). He described this as pain being perceived from a part of the body which no longer exists, therefore belonging to neuropathic pain syndromes. The phantom limb is generally described to have a tingling sensation and a definite shape that resembles the limb pre amputation. Moreover, some claim to feel it move through space in the same way that the normal limb would have, for example, walking, sitting and stretched out (Melzack, 1973). Almost all amputees would report these non painful sensations immediately after surgery (Nikolajsen et al, 2005). Initially, the phantom limb feels normal causing the amputee to use the limb for its would be usual purposes…
The pain the amputees are complaining about is called phantom limb pain. This pain usually occurs right after an amputation of either an arm, leg, or a different body part (Flor, 2002). Some professionals believe that phantom pain is developed due to the disruption of the nerve activity. These nerves discharge at the place where they were severed during amputation; therefore, causing the amputee to feel the pain (King, 2006). Other theories believe that phantom pain is all made up in the head. The grief created by the loss of a limb, or body part fosters the psychosomatic disorder. This creates the “phantom pain” that the amputee experiences (Flor, 2002). Mirror therapy is a process that psychologist help with this phantom pain.…
As the scope of care and responsibilities of Physician Assistants’ expands, so does the range of medical conditions to diagnose and treat grow. One medical condition that has become more prevalent in the past decade due to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is Phantom Limb Pain (PLP). With reported rates of PLP in 50% to 85% of amputees (Weeks, Anderson-Barnes, & Tsao, 2010, p. 278) and over 900 amputees as a result alone from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan (Weeks et al., 2010, p. 284), the need for understanding and evaluating the best treatment options in managing PLP in patients has increased. This paper will explain what PLP is, establish the most common treatments for managing and reducing PLP by comparing and contrasting recent studies…
The complex relationship between the brain and behaviors represents a major area of research and new discoveries. A fascinating feature of the human brain is its ability to be plastic in specialized areas, including those of distinct topography linked with perceptual experiences. For instance, phantom limb syndrome is a medical condition in which an amputee is able to perceive sensations from a body part that is long attached to the body. According to McCormick, Chang-Chien, Marshall, Huang, & Harden (2013), approximately 80% of amputees experience sensations or pain at some point after an amputation. Sensations during phantom limb syndrome can be described in various ways, pain, sharp muscle spasms, burning, stabbing, aching, pressure, and gnawing. The nature of phantom limb syndrome can acute or chronic and vary significantly in intensity.…
Ramachandran, V. S. and Rogers-Ramachandran, D., (2000, March). Phantom Limbs and Neural Plasticity. Neurological Review, 57(), 317-320. Retrieved from http://www.neurosciences.us/courses/systems/CentralPlas/Ramachandran_2000.pdf…
In the article “This Great and Sore Affliction” Willard Sterne Randall and Nancy Nahra analyze the controversial religious views of Anne Hutchinson as she dwells in England and later settles in the New England colony, specifically in Boston, Massachusetts. The authors explain Anne Hutchinson’s life and inform the reader about the society of Puritan New England.…
(2004). Journal of Neurology. Retrieved November 3, 2006, from Phantom Limb Pain Web site: http://infotrac.galegroup.com/itweb/jmason_main?http_rc=400&class=session&sev=temp&type=session&cause=http%2G%1B%1Aweb1.infotrac.galegroup.com%1Hygt%6Finfomark%5V672%1R5997%1C5567kY87%2Fpurl%3Drc1_EAIM_0_A77822655%98dyn%3r4!ar_fmt%2Fsw_aep%2Fjmason_main&cont=&msg…
Pain The statement made by Diane Ackerman “Being able to withstand pain depends to a considerable extent on culture and tradition, “means that the pain people feel can basically be in the mind because of the way they were brought up and what they have seen and heard in their upcoming. People really don’t know anything different besides their cultures and traditions. In Diane Ackerman’s essay she provides multiple examples to prove this statement but I will only share two. The first example she provides, is when she uses mother’s having children. In our culture after giving birth we have time off to recover and rest; likewise other cultures have their children and have to go back to work the same day, this is a tradition of the way we do things differently because that’s what our culture has brought our minds up to know. The next example she uses is when people were playing a soccer game, she noticed that they didn’t really realize they were hurt until after the game or at half-time. Mrs. Ackerman explained the reason for being because the mind was so focus on the process of the game it didn’t have time to stop and think about the pain. These people are affected by their culture because they have it in branded in their mind to not feel anything until the game is over. These were two really good supporting details that proved her statement to be true. In other ways I thought of that religion and culture had a great deal with the standing of pains is when women are carrying their children. Men often state that they are feeling their mate’s pains and taking their symptoms but in all essence it’s just a mind thing because it is not possible for that to really happen. I see this as being more of a superstition religion statement brought by Post Hoc Ergo Proter Hoc. Another example you find in religion is certain people take pain as a way of healing in religion. In certain cultures people are known to have tattoo’s and different piercings to show their way of…
The Phantom of the Opera is a classic story in which we are presented with a character (the Phantom) and his oddities, and are actually given the choice whether to like him or to loathe him. In the Story the Phantom is a character who has an impaired judgment and a disfigured face from birth, henceforth disenabling him from distinguishing between right from wrong and coping with society’s norms. It is these mental and facial impediments coupled with his violent and gruesome choices that drive him to kill and compels us to loathe him and pleads with us to sympathize with him simultaneously.…
In 6th grade I started to get terrible pains in my stomach. I just pushed them off for a while because I did not want to bother my family, but soon it became unbearable. We went to my family doctor and my specialist to see what was wrong. They both agreed to have me tested for a mitochondrial disorder, which I had every symptom of so it seemed like a pretty good possibility. Having to be tested for this just seemed like a normal test for me because I was used to getting my blood drawn every few months, but because my mother is a nurse practitioner she knew otherwise. She knew that if I were to be diagnosed with this disorder I would not have lived to see my eighteenth birthday. I know now that those six months we had to wait to get those results back from New York, was some of the hardest months of her life. Luckily, I was not diagnosed with that terrible disorder. A few months later I went back to the doctor because the pain was getting worse and worse. We decided to test my gallbladder. For a 13-year-old having a bad…
Sampson, E. Kitchen, G. (2012) North west dementa Centre. Available at: http://www.pssru.ac.uk/pdf/MCpdfs/Pain_factsheet.pdf . Accessed on 25th April 2012.…
Sufferers of alien hand will often personify the rogue limb, for example believing it to be "possessed" by some intelligent or alien spirit or an entity that they may name or identify. There is a clear distinction between the behaviors of the two hands in which the affected hand is viewed as "wayward" and sometimes "disobedient" and generally out of the realm of their own voluntary control, while the unaffected hand is under normal volitional control. At times, particularly in patients who have sustained damage to the corpus callosum that connects the two cerebral hemispheres, the hands appear to be acting in opposition to each other.…
V.S. Ramachandran, in his TED talk entitled “Three Clues to Understanding Your Brain,” states that we can better understand and learn about the functions of our brain by studying patients who have suffered damage to a small region on their brain. The first example he uses to support his idea is the Capgras delusion. People who suffer from this syndrome don’t have any emotions when they see something of importance to them. For example, when a normal person sees their mother, they would get some sort of emotional response but a person with Capgras delusion won’t get any response and even negate the fact that it is their mother. The cause of this is due to the fact that the connection between the visual areas and emotional centers is cut. His second example is his experiments with patients who have a syndrome called phantom limb and experience paralysis and pain in their phantom limb. What he found out was the paralysis in his patients’ phantom limbs were actually learned because before the patients had their limbs amputated, their limbs were paralyzed and the brain was sending messages to move but it would get visually messages that the limb wasn’t moving; thus the learned paralysis would get carried over to the phantom limb. What he did to cure his patients’ from phantom limb and the paralysis was put a mirror reflecting their adjacent limb and told them to move it around. What this does is create a conflict between the vision sensory and the muscles signals, so the brain just ignores them both making the phantom limb and pain disappear. Then Ramachandran goes on to talk about synesthesia. Synesthesia is when a person hears a sound and associates a color to it or when a person sees a number and associates a color to it. He said this happens because the areas for color and the areas for sound are next to each other and they are wired together. He also stated all of us are born with everything in the brain…
Diabetes is one of the leading causes of death hear in the states. I must admit that I struggle with eating too much fast food myself. This is why I am determined to plead a good case and maybe I can even convince myself enough that I might stop eating so much fast food. I am also concerned I am not setting a good example for my children. I want them to know how to eat healthy and maintain a balanced diet and still enjoy what they are eating. I am sure there are a many people that can relate and should be excited to hear my results. Eating fast food is a direct cause of diabetes; making the effort to eat at home might be the difference needed to avoid developing this disease.…
