Amputees with Attitudes
The Amputees that I have worked with have taught me so much about bodies, mind and spirit.
ANNA
Anna and her husband played bridge with us for several years in the late 70’s and early 80’s. At that time I practiced massage, and one day she asked for one. “Sure,” I said. I had never worked with an amputee before and knew I would learn something.
She had told me that she lost her arm (actually her whole upper left quarter which includes the arm, shoulder blade and left half of the left clavicle) in the ‘60s to cancer after several surgeries—one of them removing her right fibula as a bone graft.
Anna had four children and her husband was in the military and away for several months at a time. At that time there were no support groups, no special online stores where you could get special bras or other helpful items. Anna sewed her own bras and figured out how to fasten them herself. She developed many items to help her reach things, open and close doors when she was carrying a bag. Her house looked like an inventor’s heaven.
Every time, I would see her for a massage she would complain about coffee (“why does everyone have to drink it, it smells so horrible”), perfume in toilet paper (“it is just so ridiculous to put perfume in toilet paper”), perfume in laundry detergent (“why, why, why, perfume everywhere”). Of course this was before Tide Free.
Anna was angry.
She also experienced constant phantom pain in her left hand and arm. When she first came to me, I asked her to describe her hand and arm. She demonstrated (with her existing arm) an arm that was tense with a hand that looked like a claw, pointing up.
She liked the massages that I gave her and would feel better for a day or two afterward. One day, she had dozed off a bit and I decided to massage the meridians of her left (phantom) arm. I knew where her arm was and I knew in which direction the meridians ran. I knew that J.R. Worsley, the man who brought Classical Acupuncture to the West said that if we lose a limb or an organ, it is still there on a mental and spiritual level. So, I massaged her left arm.
Imagine my surprise when all the little muscle ends along the remnants of her left clavicle began to spasm (who knew that there were muscle remnants there?), her eyes popped open and she practically shouted at me, “What are you doing?” I didn’t know how else to say I was massaging her left arm other than to say “I am massaging your left arm.” “Well, stop it, I don’t like it,” she said firmly. I slowly stopped.
Each time I saw her after that, when she dozed off a bit, I would start massaging her left hand and arm again. Each time the muscles around the left clavicle would start twitching and spasming and she would jerk to attention and tell me to stop. (It is a wonder that she kept coming back to see me, but I felt intuitively that it was important and on some level she must have too.)
When I started studying Zero Balancing I told Anna I wanted to try something new. She wasn’t interested, but I convinced her to try it and told her that if she didn’t like it I wouldn’t do it any more. When I finished she said she didn’t like it at all. So the next time I did an extra long massage, did no Zero Balancing and did not massage her left arm. When I told her I was finished she said that I had forgotten to do the ‘long pulls’ that she liked so much (only found in Zero Balancing!).
After I studied CranioSacral Therapy I began incorporating that as well as Zero Balancing into her massage. I had also reestablished my connection with her left arm and during one treatment, picked it up (I am sure I looked pretty silly), and started to unwind it. I found the position where I think it was cut off. She was paying attention and didn’t stop me. About a month later I asked her how her arm was feeling. She said that it was much more relaxed and was lying comfortably at her side, bent at the elbow with her hand palm up next to her chest. She also said, “You know, Judith, I really don’t like it when you massage my left arm but it feels so much better after you do it.”
During the time I had seen her she became happier, more relaxed and less sensitive to her environment (or at least didn’t complain about it anymore). The pain in her left arm was gone and she was moving forward in her life.
I moved to Charlottesville in 1993 and about then (her husband had died a couple of years earlier), she decided to go to a 2-year college and get an AA in Fine Arts. I visited her a few years later and she told me that she had had such a good time, she got her Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts specializing in sculpting and water colors. Sculpting! Then she had a show at the Arlington County Courthouse.
What a woman.
JANE
Then there was Jane. She had had her right leg amputated years ago due to diabetes. In about 1994 she had several heart attacks. At the hospital they wanted to amputate her other leg because of gangrene in her foot. Jane wasn’t interested in any more amputation and went to her daughter’s home to die. Everyone thought she had about 24 hours to live.
The family gathered around and I called her the next day surprised that she was still alive. “Judith,” she said to me in a soft voice, “I am so embarrassed. My whole family is here and they are talking softly, and what if I don’t die?”
Well, she didn’t die for at least 2 more years. Of course I went to her house and treated the leg that wasn’t there! We all think that getting off of all medicines and fasting for the first week or so didn’t hurt either. By the way the gangrene cleared up. She was living with her daughter, a well-known nurse practitioner (and so was getting the best possible care at home) and I never saw a happier woman than Jane, when her daughter was honored as the Virginia Woman of the Year in 1995.
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