Phantom Pain: a Memoire: It’S All in Your Head

By Stephen Sumner

Just any old perfect summer night in Italy; cyclist Stephen Sumner was riding his old-timer motorbike home from pizza with friends and found himself between the headlights. A hit and run accident left him for dead in a Tuscan farmers field. Somehow he survived, only to open his eyes, days later, and realize that his life had changed forever: his left leg was gone above the knee. Stephen had been given a new and very different life; lopsided maybe, but a life nonetheless. He moved forward, propelled by half-baked certainty and a longing to just make it work. But what works for a former jock who is missing a drive-wheel? He re-invented himself and founded an organization called Me and My Mirror, which is dedicated to helping people of every stripe and any age in poor or war-torn countries deal with the tragedy of losing a limb, or anything else that leaves phantoms behind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Jan 28, 2015
• ISBN: 9781480812987

Stephen Sumner

Stephen Sumner is from Vancouver, Canada. He is a former commercial fisherman and pro cyclist and the founder of ‘Me and My Mirror’; a humanitarian organization dedicated to relieving the suffering from Phantom Limb Pain among amputees through the use of Mirror Therapy. Learn more at meandmymirror.org

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Copyright © 2015 Stephen Sumner.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

ISBN: 978-1-4808-1297-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-1296-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-1298-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014922105

All photographs are by the author.

Archway Publishing rev. date: 1/28/2015

Contents

Slack Tide

Marking Time

Fall Move

Catherine Wheel

Happenstance

Hidebound

For Colin, for Matthias

And, of course, for Kitty

‘Crawling across this sometime garden

now in our chaircars like clever nits

in a plush caterpillar

should we take time to glance

from our dazzle of folders

and behold this great green girl

grown sick with man

sick with the likes of us?’

Earle Birney

from : ‘Transcontinental’

‘One must allow contradictory tendencies to proliferate,

one must cultivate the opposite ideals,

we must follow reason alone.

One must not fret over the imperfections of life on earth.

One must carry on.

The pleasures of living in Italy come

from living in a world made by man, for man,

to man’s measurements.’

Luigi Barzini

from : ‘The Italians’

Noli turbare circulos meos

Archimedes

‘Don’t mind my circles.’

dedication

It’s ten years-and-change since my fender-bender in Tuscany. The luxury of being able to ponder that decade – a fruitful and beautiful spell – and, well, poeticize about it is because so many fine people banded together to scrape my ass off the asphalt and kick it back into gear. My debt to those heartsome people, some of whom I’ve yet to meet, is bottomless. I would like to mention just a few:

The formidable Denise and Pietro, near the top of La Montagnola, are in a special suite at the Top of my Heart. There’s Palmino & Cinzia and Fabio (Il Columbiano) too, topping a long list of excruciatingly considerate Italians. You too, Alberto.

All the doctors and nurses and mop-maids and everyone else at Le Scotte Provincial Hospital in Siena have my, erm, undying gratitude. They saved my life, and made me laugh a lot in the process.

Viva Italia!

Then, of course, there is Gaia. Thank you.

My friends from this side of the pond know who they are, probably by now lament re-floating me, and so enough said. I Love You.

And so I lived, and everything was peachy, more or less, except for this Phantom Pain, which was quite literally KILLING me. Long after the end of this book, I found a cure in the form of a household mirror. A look in the mirror. That’s all it took.

The agony of Phantom Limb Pain cannot possibly be overstated, and most amputees, particularly in ‘Developing Countries’, have no choice but to endure it, miserably, for what remains of their lives.

I relieved myself of the most odious, shattering and trenchant thing in my life with a hand-held mirror. After a small handful of weeks the horror evaporated, my vision cleared and I realized that I too was free and clear. It worked.

I also realized that nobody in the Hurting World was going to discover and utilize this simple elegant secret unless someone like me brought it to them. For me it was a no-brainer. That’s what I’m doing now and have been doing for 3 full years. If there are any profits from your purchase of this book, that’s where they’re going. I don’t aim to quit and, tragically, there is no end to the misery out there.

For a world of information on what Mirror Therapy is and what I’m doing, please check me out @

Meandmymirror.org

Anyhow, I trust you will find this an engaging read. If you like, please send me your feedback at:

[e-mail]

Warmly, stephen

1.jpg

Dear Kitty,

Just a quick update with some late-breaking news: I got a teaching job with a language school in Siena. I’m their professor in the field, roving from one hilltop village to the next, bringing English to the Italian countryfolk and it suits me to the ground. I got the job on Tuesday, bought a superfine motorbike on Thursday and taught my first class on Friday night. I’m the Village Pastor baby!

I sail along these godsent Tuscan roads on an old grove green motorbike that spins like a top and I bring the Word to the Faithful. What I need I pack in my noggin or hump in my trusty satchel. It’s mostly Rock and Roll lyrics because I’m teaching them our divine language through the music of the devil! All-in-all it’s a great gig: I make just enough money to put gas in the tank, beer in my belly and fresh tires on my bicycle plus I’ve got all the time in the world to ride. Riding is, after all, the point. My beloved Tuscany has never looked so fine and now I’ve found a way to stay for a time. Gotta jump to prepare a class. Today, even though they’re beginners, we’ll study The Rolling Stones. Don’t ever forget that you’re the real gas in my tank. I miss you so much it hurts.

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T here it is the window of my discontent my non-event. There, hard to starboard, swallows dropping like stones across it. I can only hope the poor birds get it together before the sidewalk. In a few minutes three infermieri three nurses will come to help lift my shattered carcass – moving me and my pissbag. My left leg’s gone about six inches above the knee what knee and here they come all smiles another dream team. They hoist and lever me into an Industrial Revolution-type wheelchair shunt me roll me over slide that same window up. They’re doing it as a favour for me cause I can’t truck with this corrente thing I’m dying a slow death not dying from my injuries but dying from the goddamn heat.

It’s two-to-a-room and my roomie old Signore Giardiniere old Remo will hold tight for the moment but he’ll pipe up soon enough. All the ward’s doors are thrown open which must piss Remo off from a draught standpoint, they call it corrente – old world Italians are mortified by corrente – but the nurses they need instant access to us, in case one of us starts headin’ south, so everywhere the doors are open. Visitors are parading the hall all spruced up and in their sunny Sunday best I haven’t seen a razor since last Sunday, my bare ass is pooching out the back of the wheelchair but I don’t care I’m off to the window the backwards hospital shift worn frontwards like a toga cause the giant kindergarten plaster of Paris cast on my arm won’t fit through the left armhole, all my starboard ribs are broken I don’t move so well don’t always think so clearly. And I’m burning up, though I don’t feel so hot atall.

Sheets of sweat-rolling down like a liquid avalanche the fracture line running across the actual fracture line of my snapped collarbone finally a healing breeze and on it not the smell of care, chemicals and desperation but lavender umbrella pine and rosemary sweat now evaporating anxiety evaporating like a time-lapse photograph then exhaustion please not already squirming discomfort and thumping pain a pain admixed with panic a pain there’s nothing for you can’t fix Giardiniere ah yes there he is with his slurr his patchy carotids and his stroke addled face roaring: ‘Attenzione corrente!’ The devil himself is borne on draughts.

5 15 20 mins this time gotta sleep sooo tired always tired

cant sleep cant ever sleep not sleepings gonna kill me I’ll die without punctuation I’ll buy the farm I’ll slip into something more crazy slip my leash and then slip away

1.jpg

Klingle was hunting me – a formal methodical old-school hit-man in a black tux

But Klingle wasn’t a dream Klingle came to me in a coma and the hysterics of the comatose will peal your paint off

The comatose are forever disturbing forever disturbed

The square of window with the swallows is now jet black not midnight black cause with any luck it’s long past midnight. I wait flat on my back the right side of head nightsweat plastered to the pillow I’m power-staring at the window willing it to brighten … the nights are so damn long the nights are damnation the nights are wrong.

I need the morning so bad. It’s just as bad, of course, the day, but the procession of events is soothing. Intestino?

It took me a couple days to figure that one out; they weren’t too insistent, at first. What it is is an invitation for some quality time with a bedpan, a ‘padella’. Nothing soothing about that – padella – then more infernal insufferable downtime, in-in-in-in, tick … tick … breakfast the only meal I can eat toast and jam toast and jam toast and jam no coffee but ‘Orzo’ barley coffee substitute, coffee will give me mood swings they say I guess who knows but I want a real coffee exactly as much as I want a good belt of morphine.

There’s a shrill metallic bustle today and I remember today’s the day of my interventino – tinininninno – just a little one.

Dear Rosanna or rather Dr Avella with the dewy eyes and the smoker’s cough pricking me all over in an alcove outside the surgery and there’s a garage door of all things and it’s open and I can see that those swallows really don’t come to grief they pull it together and jink away just before the tarmac, just in time – pricking me and pricking me but not blissful sleep. Anestetico locale, caro; it’s safer for you – a quiet suspiration of woe. Is me. A buzzsaw takes the cast away on my poor crumpled left arm and it’s lying on cold steel like a sparrow with bad timing.

They’re building a sterility tent around me and they lied.

This is no interventino no itty bitty procedure said they were going to hang my arm back together on a titanium string like a well-hung wind chime and I’m a cyclist you see so titanium has a nice ring to it but no oh no I see Lacovara the orthopedic surgeon thumbing through a toolkit thumbing through a hardware box I hear him revving up his drill and see the first screw pump in on the monitor. It was a mistake to leave a real-time x-ray monitor on my side by my side. Can’t see him cause he’s on the other side of the green tent but I can hear him sweating cursing calling out for screws one after the other: dieci, otto, otto, dieci, dodici, dodici … two plates twenty-eight screws interfuckingventino but I’m told it’s all titanium so there’s some consolation there. Damnear four hours and no pain in my arm a job well done, but pain fear and desperate discomfort are everywhere else.

Streaming tears and sweet Rosanna no Dottoressa Avella coming around holding my good hand which is not too good either and overandover telling me just a few minuti more. Minutini. Mere moments more. Attimini. You’re so brave caro and she thumbs away my tears how very unsanitary. Wasn’t long ago that the inni-minniness of Italian dimminnniuatives i found charming. Now it’s a conspiracy. But Lacovara I love him cause he’s sweating as much as me sweating like a blacksmith complete with hammer and tongs.

A brighteyed gurneyride a trail of yellowed ceiling tiles flipping by like empty old newspaperpages arm sticking straight up like a bare mast on a motorsailer back to the sixth floor where I’m presented with my prize. A morphine bombola. Bambola