4 replies to this topic

[Gabrielle]

Hi, I just found this forum tonight, looking for an answer to a question. I am a nurse and one of my patients is a quadriplegic woman. Tonight, I was testing her blood sugar, and after I pricked her finger (for the blood droplet), she asked, "Did you just prick my finger?" Yes. "Was it the index finger of my right hand?" Yes.

She couldn't see what I was doing, because of the position she was in, but she felt it! I asked her if she felt it and she said, "No, my hand didn't feel it, but my imaginary hand did." I asked her to describe that for me. She said she has no feeling in her real limbs, hands and feet, but she does have feeling in her imaginary limbs, hands and feet. The only way she could describe what that meant was to say it was like having extra invisible limbs which do have sensation.

All I can equate this phenomenon to is the concept of "phantom pain", but she is not an amputee.

Can anyone shed some light on this phenomenon?

[Lucky]

Very hard to explain but I know what you're saying, it is a little strange, and hard to explain. I think we all have a little bit of extrasencity (if that makes sense).
Something weird happened to me yesterday. If anything, I'm hyposensitive and if I ever have to give a blood sample (with those huge needles which you push the little bottles on the end and they automaticly suck out the blood) it really hurts and my whole arm spasms. But this time she put the needle in and I never felt a thing, and those needles must be a good 2mm in diameter!
I take it she's diabetic ?
All the best and maybe someone else knows a bit more about what happened ?

[bubbleandsqueak]

I have some wired feelings like that. If I put a hot or cold plate on my lap I can feel a change in the way my legs feel. I always have a type of tingly feeling in my legs.

[itsjustme]

I've had some experience phantom feelings especially at first. I'm a T2 para 2 years now. I never knew where my legs were. For instance when I was in rehab on the mat on my stomach I thought that my legs were bent and up in the air. I looked in the mirror and they were laying flat. I had constant sensation of my legs being somewhere that they weren't or my toes being curled over one another. It was actually like I could feel my legs but then I would look and see that they weren't where they felt like they were or I would have my family check my toes to make sure for me.

The second thing that I experience isn't phantom but if something hurts me below my line of paralysis like a pinch or especially if my skin tears in the crease of my legs, something stings somewhere above the line of my paralysis usually in my upper stomach somewhere but sometimes on my back letting me know that something hurt!

[daniel562]

a while back my wife and i were playing around and she bit the side of my foot i didn't feel everything but i felt the rim of mouth and some teeth very lightly though
and when i was in the (H) doing my rehab a man in wheel chair there(25 years) said there's no way of feeling it all "phantom" so i dont know i guess it just depends on the person