Phantom pains

I’m writing this at 3:20 am. I was sleeping fine, then my leg started hurting. That was about an hour ago, now I need to sleep ! I’m trying to distract myself to make it stop. 

To describe it …firstly imagine hiccups.  Just when you think they’ve stopped, they’re back. You don’t know when the next one is coming. You’ve tried a few things, you just start to go to sleep, then they’re back. 

Now onto the pain itself. There’s a bit of an achy cramp, but there is also someone jabbing a pin into the centre of my leg. Not on the surface, where you could rub it, but deep down inside.

When it happens I jump, or squirm in the bed. It’s pretty high on the ‘out of ten’ score. But then it goes. It’s not like a normal pain where you get a dull pain for a long time after. That’s when you think it’s gone, but then it comes back again. 

The medical thinking is that the pains are caused by the brain trying to communicate with the missing limb. In this case, the missing limb has been gone for 3 1/2 years, so they haven’t talked to each other for a while. 

I can take painkillers, but I’ll have trouble waking up in the morning. Just going to try to sleep again ….