Oh, the phantom limb

I found this book to be both and interesting and at other times redundant. I was truly fascinated by the mention of amputees being able to "feel" their removed limbs, but I was unaware that it was usually pain that they felt. This caused me to look at physical pain in a whole new light. I always figured that pain had to be caused by some action or stimulus whether it be do to injury or sickness. I never thought that it could be felt due to a lack of having a full nerve connection. I had always thought that it was interesting that an amputee could "feel" their missing limb and I had never taken it quite seriously that they could feel pain or discomfort with it. The whole idea leaves me a bit unsettled as well because it goes to show the complete lack of understanding that the world as a whole has for pain. The repetition by the author on the fact that a person can not fully describe pain also intrigued me. How does one describe their level of pain? Can there really be a standardization that will help those in the medical field better deal with a patient in pain? It truly is frustrating to go to the hospital and be unable to communicate to your doctor the pain you are feeling and how intense it is. How do you relate to another person's pain as well? Everyone has a different version of what hurts so there is going to be a lot lost in translation between people on the level of pain. Pain itself is such a small word for something that covers a broad scope of sensation. I think the author does a very good job in portraying that in the various examples he uses in discussing pain levels and communicating them. One would think that the medical community would be working to find a way to better understand and treat pain, and yet in three hundred years we haven't really made too many huge discoveries. Instead the medical community has only found more things that leave them thoroughly perplexed. The one thing I didn't like much about the author is that he had a strange way of trying to come to conclusions. He circled around an idea before he actually addressed it. He also mentioned all different types of scales used to describe pain and yet didn't seem to let the reader know which seemed to produce the best results for an individual in pain trying to communicate to another. His discounting of holistic healing I think is incorrect. I have found in my experience that certain types of holistic healing such as shiatsu or cranial sacral therapy to be quite beneficial for individuals who suffer from sports injuries or chronic who have found main stream medicine and treatments to be completely ineffective. This type of healing has been around for centuries so there has to be some form of effectiveness to it.