It was the year of 2002, first days of November...
It was a legendary World Cup experience for Turkish soccer fans in Korea & Japan. After almost a few months have passed, this was still being talked about on the national news. Every newspaper and TV show was filled with soccer. Between all these big news, a few lines of text and an article with a photo of a wrecked up car;
young soccer player almost died! He came alive from a ruined car like a miracle etc. etc.
2 days before…
It was a November morning, a regular day for Ahmet, he woke up to go to the teams training. Early in the morning when he was walking out from his home which he had bought from a mortgage with the first installment of his transfer fee to his car under a light rain he suddenly staggered, he was almost spraining his ankle. He sat down still in his old model car which he hadn't had time to replace. Just now, he could have got injured and he could've lost 4-5 weeks of his fee per every match. He thought something like this would be a disaster for him as the season has just started. He took a deep breath and tried to erase that moment from his memory.
The distance between his home and the club was about half an hour long drive if he weren't stuck in traffic but he was a careful driver about driving slowly, to know the value of his life. He would never have problems with following the rules.
He had had the thought of changing his car all drive long. It wasn't for luxury, he had enough money to buy a new car now. But after a few months later...
And while he was on his road with still these thoughts on his mind, the last thing Ahmet remembered was the truck coming right towards him from the opposite lane breaking the barriers... Everything happened in a blink of an eye.
And darkness...
This darkness lasted for 60 hours. When he opened his eyes he was back to brightness with the light of the humming fluorescent lamps.
His brain which had been sleeping for a long time found its orientation in a short time. Yes, he was lying still in a bed in the hospital. There weren't many people around him. Suddenly, he fully woke up with the sound of the nurse.
The only thing he felt was pain but his confusion was bigger. He was remembering the crash and he was very happy that he was breathing. He slowly checked the parts of his body that he was able to see. Yes, there must have been many fractures. Both of his arms were stabilized and the only thing he could do was to move his head around. And the first thing he realized was that there was another patient next to him. That day, he didn't know that this old man would be his best friend for the next 2 years of his life yet.
But he was curious about his family. He couldn't understand why they weren't here, next to him. A little later, a group of white-aproned people came. They told him, with a smile, about him being alive and not having had a brain trauma was a miracle but he was still asking about his family.
When the doctors said he wasn't ready to see his family he understood that something was wrong. Yes, the check was fully normal and almost all the vital signs were back to normal. His only problem was the casts covering almost all of his body and the unimaginable pain in his leg.
The thing he said during the inspection filled the whole room with a chilling wind,
The pain in my right foot is very bad doctor! But it doesn't feel like just pain, it's a very different pain, what could it be?
This question Ahmet asked made the team go silent for a moment. It was obvious that the veteran doctor was having a hard time choosing his words in every way. Ahmet didn't know this doctor was going to be the psychiatrist expert he'll be going to therapy for a long time.
Emptiness... just emptiness...
After that, a deep sleep with the effect of the tranquilizer and when he woke up his family was there. But Ahmet wasn't sure he wanted to see them, he glanced his eyes away. He didn't want anyone to look at him with pity.
He was now a guy with one of his legs missing from the knee up, in his own words 'half a man'.
It wasn't easy for him to cope with this. Months later he was still feeling his missing leg and couldn't bear the pain of it. He realized this wasn't a hallucination. His friend in the hospital room Huseyin was suffering from the same things.
And the doctors called this Phantom Pain… How strange! The pain of absence must be something just like this.
Physiotherapy lasting for months, psychological getting him used to the prosthesis, this was probably the thing that bothered him the most, he woke up with an unbearable pain and cramp feeling some nights, in his missing leg...
The pains sometimes lasting all day and sometimes more intense had become his nightmare. But after 2.5 years, most of his complains were gone with the therapy. Although the nightmares continued happening from time to time, his life started to get back to normal(!), as an amputee.
What happened in this tragic story that I've witnessed just at the beginning of my career life are unfortunately not made up. And believe me, many people around the world are losing their extremities because of traumas and vascular diseases every year. The most strange part of the physiological disaster they live is the situation medicine can't exactly solve yet; Phantom Limb Pain...
Next, l will talk about the phantom limb pain with more details and is there any hope?
)