Tuesday, April 25, 2006
You're stepping on my toe with your amputated foot
Tony dislocated his right shoulder and is finally recovering wonderfully. This is a good thing, as this experience has taught me that being around my husband in pain is agony. This is not because of his behavior, which was restrained and admirable (yes, he really is a badass:), but because it hurts my gut too much to see him in that state. Seriously, any mobster who wants to control me can just threaten to injure Tony and I'll do anything to prevent him to come to harm.
Tony and I endured a horrible trial a few weeks ago when he came home admitting he'd dislocated his shoulder in a Judo match (he won the fight anyway, making him the hero of his team, who won as well) and I've never been so scared in my life. He's in physical therapy and is finally getting his strength back. He claims he doesn't need Ibuprophen much anymore, so it looks like smooth sailing ahead. He's even eager to start martial arts training again.
So why am I still in agony? Ibuprophen doesn't help, nor did anything stronger. My right shoulder feels as if it has been pulled from its socket. This makes no sense, because I've never done a judo throw in my life. Even my physical strength has been affected by his injury. I couldn't even complete my strength reps yesterday at half the weight I normally do. He's no longer hurting, but I'm in agony? I know they say marriage is "one flesh" (which can be fun in intimate situations, where you lose track of whose limb is whose and feel each other's sensations) but this is ridiculous! Is this more proof that I need a visit from the Sanity Claus?
According to V.S. Ramachandran, who is a professor and the director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California in San Diego, I'm not crazy. People often feel the pain of their significant others. Instead, what has happened is similar to one of the phenomenon he loves to study in detail: phantom limb pain.
Phantom limb pain can be defined as feeling a sensation from a body part that is no longer attached to the body. People who have had their leg amputated often report feeling pain in the missing limb as well as other sentations. Amputees missing an arm even say that they can "wave" the missing hand. This pheonomenon is so stable and pervasive it has even made skeptics (Hermann Von Helmholz comes to mind) acknowledge psychology as a valid science.
Why does phantom limb happen? The traditional explanation given for phantom limb pain involves your brain requiring feedback from your limbs to interpret sensations. You'll get hurt, but eventually your limb will send a message back to your head saying, "hey, I'm all right now". When a limb is amputated, there's no limb to reassure the brain that everything is OK. The pain message is, therefore, permanently fixed on the "On" position.
Unfortuately, that explanation doesn't explain everything. Ramachandran discovered that the brain has a genuine "Map" of each part of the body in a different location of the brain. When a limb is removed, the parts "next door" to the missing parts start to seize the unused space the missing limb once required. Next door to an arm is an area of the face. The face starts to fill in the arm area, however, it's not perfect. Sensations often get confused in people who have no limbs missing, somethimes when the area in between parts is stiumulated both parts register feeling. If you touch the area adjacent in the brain, your brain may register that you're experiencing feeling in both areas of the body. For example, if someone touches a specific area of your face it can feel JUST like a sensation in the missing limb! This is why we can get turned on when someone sucks our toes--the "toe" map is right next to the "genitals" map. Hence, by sucking on one's toe, you an touch somewhere far more intimate at the same time. The cure for phantom limb agony? Our physiolgical maps are continually evolving, adding and altering areas as necessary.
Ramachandran found that our brain relies heavily upon cues given by our eyes and senses to determine whether we're in pain. A highly imaginative and visual person like me (I often construct visual images of things to figure out problems, equations, or just because I like to) can "connect" physically with my partner. My brain sees Tony. We've been together for seven years and counting--sharing the same bed, food, sharing words and care. My brain realized he is very important to me and decided to adapt with this purpose in mind. Industriously, my brain constructed a "Tony map" in my cortex that corresponds to my own body parts. Hence, when his arm is injured, mine feels pain.
Luckily, my arm doesn't hurt nearly as badly as it used to. The arm pain I felt only began to abate once Tony was able to remove his arm sling permanently--the sling is a visual cue to the terrible injury that reminds my brain that he's hurt. He's not "all perfect" just yet, so I still feel painful twinges (remember, he refuses to be a wuss and complain about pain--I must therefore rely on nonverbal behavior to gauge his physical state) whenever I see a behavior that indicates he is in pain--when he winces, I twinge, but the more I see him moving without difficulty, the better my arm feels. On days where he has no pain, I have no pain. He did something harmful today, though--I'm in pain again.
One body, one flesh? As far as my brain is concerned, YES. I'm just going to have to continue to request that Tony be more careful when executing unfamiliar Judo throws.
Tony and I endured a horrible trial a few weeks ago when he came home admitting he'd dislocated his shoulder in a Judo match (he won the fight anyway, making him the hero of his team, who won as well) and I've never been so scared in my life. He's in physical therapy and is finally getting his strength back. He claims he doesn't need Ibuprophen much anymore, so it looks like smooth sailing ahead. He's even eager to start martial arts training again.
So why am I still in agony? Ibuprophen doesn't help, nor did anything stronger. My right shoulder feels as if it has been pulled from its socket. This makes no sense, because I've never done a judo throw in my life. Even my physical strength has been affected by his injury. I couldn't even complete my strength reps yesterday at half the weight I normally do. He's no longer hurting, but I'm in agony? I know they say marriage is "one flesh" (which can be fun in intimate situations, where you lose track of whose limb is whose and feel each other's sensations) but this is ridiculous! Is this more proof that I need a visit from the Sanity Claus?
According to V.S. Ramachandran, who is a professor and the director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California in San Diego, I'm not crazy. People often feel the pain of their significant others. Instead, what has happened is similar to one of the phenomenon he loves to study in detail: phantom limb pain.
Phantom limb pain can be defined as feeling a sensation from a body part that is no longer attached to the body. People who have had their leg amputated often report feeling pain in the missing limb as well as other sentations. Amputees missing an arm even say that they can "wave" the missing hand. This pheonomenon is so stable and pervasive it has even made skeptics (Hermann Von Helmholz comes to mind) acknowledge psychology as a valid science.
Why does phantom limb happen? The traditional explanation given for phantom limb pain involves your brain requiring feedback from your limbs to interpret sensations. You'll get hurt, but eventually your limb will send a message back to your head saying, "hey, I'm all right now". When a limb is amputated, there's no limb to reassure the brain that everything is OK. The pain message is, therefore, permanently fixed on the "On" position.
Unfortuately, that explanation doesn't explain everything. Ramachandran discovered that the brain has a genuine "Map" of each part of the body in a different location of the brain. When a limb is removed, the parts "next door" to the missing parts start to seize the unused space the missing limb once required. Next door to an arm is an area of the face. The face starts to fill in the arm area, however, it's not perfect. Sensations often get confused in people who have no limbs missing, somethimes when the area in between parts is stiumulated both parts register feeling. If you touch the area adjacent in the brain, your brain may register that you're experiencing feeling in both areas of the body. For example, if someone touches a specific area of your face it can feel JUST like a sensation in the missing limb! This is why we can get turned on when someone sucks our toes--the "toe" map is right next to the "genitals" map. Hence, by sucking on one's toe, you an touch somewhere far more intimate at the same time. The cure for phantom limb agony? Our physiolgical maps are continually evolving, adding and altering areas as necessary.
Ramachandran found that our brain relies heavily upon cues given by our eyes and senses to determine whether we're in pain. A highly imaginative and visual person like me (I often construct visual images of things to figure out problems, equations, or just because I like to) can "connect" physically with my partner. My brain sees Tony. We've been together for seven years and counting--sharing the same bed, food, sharing words and care. My brain realized he is very important to me and decided to adapt with this purpose in mind. Industriously, my brain constructed a "Tony map" in my cortex that corresponds to my own body parts. Hence, when his arm is injured, mine feels pain.
Luckily, my arm doesn't hurt nearly as badly as it used to. The arm pain I felt only began to abate once Tony was able to remove his arm sling permanently--the sling is a visual cue to the terrible injury that reminds my brain that he's hurt. He's not "all perfect" just yet, so I still feel painful twinges (remember, he refuses to be a wuss and complain about pain--I must therefore rely on nonverbal behavior to gauge his physical state) whenever I see a behavior that indicates he is in pain--when he winces, I twinge, but the more I see him moving without difficulty, the better my arm feels. On days where he has no pain, I have no pain. He did something harmful today, though--I'm in pain again.
One body, one flesh? As far as my brain is concerned, YES. I'm just going to have to continue to request that Tony be more careful when executing unfamiliar Judo throws.
