Random Things About How Phantom Limbs Can Trick Your Body in the Weirdest Ways (12 items)

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  (#2) Sometimes Just a "Phantom Hand" Will "Dangle from the Stump"

  In a phenomenon known as "telescoping," some patients experience a "fading" of the phantom limb until it is nothing but a hand, "dangling from the stump." This occurs in roughly 50% of cases, according to Dr. Ramachandran. Why does the brain allow the rest of the phantom limb to fade?

  One theory is that the hand is "over-represented" in the somatosensory cortex, the main sensory receptive area in the brain for the sense of touch, which is called "cortical magnification." The lack of visual feedback from a phantom arm creates a "sensory conflict" that the brain deals with by "fading" it out, leaving the "over-represented" hands behind. 
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  (#6) Phantom Limbs Can Get Stuck in Painful Poses

  Phantom limbs can sometimes assume awkward or even painful poses against the will of the amputee. These may range from the relatively benign, such as your phantom arm twisted behind your head after you wake up in the morning, to the god-awful, such as the report of a soldier that lost his arm to a grenade. The grenade went off in his hand, rendering his phantom hand in a "permanently clenched and painful posture."
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  (#11) Leprosy Patients Who Lose Limbs Don't Get Phantoms

  A sort of sick "silver lining" to losing a limb via leprosy is that there won't be any phantom pain—or any phantom feelings of any kind. This gradual loss of limbs, experts say, is phantom-free because the patient learns to "assimilate the stump into his body image" using "visual feedback." In other words, they see it all go down. 

  There is, however, an interesting little "footnote" to this fact: if the leprosy patient has to have their stump amputated, the entire phantom limb is often "resurrected"—not just a "phantom stump."
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  (#7) Inanimate Objects Can "Merge" with the Phantom Limb

  Phantom limbs aren't just an "illusion" of a missing arm or limb: they can also merge with objects such as splints. One patient that had his arm amputated while gripping a vertical wooden splint tightly reported that the splint was evident in his phantom. His phantom fingers, in other words, felt like they were "hooked over the end" of a phantom splint. There are also cases of the "memories" of wedding rings or watch bands continuing to exist with the phantoms.
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  (#10) Phantom Limbs "Remember" Old Limb Pain

  Removing a limb doesn't necessarily remove any painful conditions that existed on that limb. Phantom limbs will "remember" the pain of say, a wrist injury, even long after the wrist is gone. There are even accounts of arthritis sufferers experiencing a "flare up" in their hands during cold weather. . . even though their hands were long gone.

  This phenomenon also extends to other body parts: there are reports of "phantom menstrual cramps" after hysterectomy and phantom "ulcer pains" after a partial gastrectomy (removal of all or part of the stomach).
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  (#3) The Phantom Limb Could Hurt for Decades

  Phantom limb sensations may only last "for a few day or weeks, then gradually fade from consciousness," but they could also last for years. In about 30% of cases, the sensations last for decades. There are even fringe cases of phantoms lasting 44 and 57 years.

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