Have you tried to massage where it hurts?Or a heating pad set on low?If the pain gets to bad then you could ask your doc for some meds.If it is a recent amputation then the pain/sensations may get better with time.

I had the same problems at first, I had blocked arteries in both legs.( A bypass saved my left leg ). The pain was very bad before the surgeries. It was scary for me too, sometimes it felt like someone was driving a spike through the foot that was now gone. I can tell you what helped me in the first months.When I wasn't wearing the leg and while sleeping I always wore a shrinker sock. I was using meds also, but it often seemed that they were only helping a little. The best thing I did was buy a hot tub. ( I know this isn't possible for everyone ). For me it was worth every penny, I used it two or three times a day. When the pain got really bad in the middle of the night I would use it. For most amputees the phantom pains will lessen with time. They often " telescope ", this happened with me. After a few months I didn't feel the phantom pains where my foot used to be, they moved upwards. I advise research on the internet also, there's a lot of information out there, mirror therapy works for some people. I hope that things get better for you soon, have faith, they will. Hang in there !

Hi Jody
I too had trouble with phantom pain and when I was in rehab we tried mirror therapy and it worked for me. What you do is put a big mirror between you legs and do exercises with the good leg and watch the reflection of your leg in the mirror. This helps to like rewire the brain into thinking that the missing limb is alright. What happens is that you were in pain for so long that the brain still set pain signals to the missing limb and watching the reflection of you limb in the mirror resets the brain to make it stop sending pain signals. I did it for 15 minutes a day for 5 weeks and the pain has gone away. You may also want to try gabapentin (nerontin) which helps with nerve pain.
Rich

This is something I have always heard about from people but never really understood. I have always wondered why this happens and how can it hurt if its not even there.
If so many people have it then it must be real.
I know people say its in the mind but its more than that.

Oooooohhh, yeah, it's real, and a lot of the time it can be painful as heck! A lot of it seems to depend on the type of amputation and where the nerves were cut. In my circumstances, I was lucky and had the amputation so high there weren't many nerve endings left exposed. These, at least for me, have only resulted in minor twinges that last about a minute and end about as soon as I reposition myself on the chair or whatever; most of the time it pops up as odd itches where there aren't places, any more. For about the first week after mine, I's have sworn some sadistic person was getting weird jollies tickling my leg and foot, but about as soon as things started mending and healing up, they went away. My theory is, the cut nerves touch microscopic bits of metal from the instruments that get left in the incision, but that's just my theory. You'd be surprised how much little tiny fragments can generate on a bare nerve end, and try as they might to polish and remove such fragments when making scalpels, forceps, etc., they can not always get absolutely every little bit...

Time will tell if yours is the type of phantom pains that will go away or become tolerable, and a lot of people on here have gotten "Hey, that worked fine!" responses from their method of dealing with it.

What about using wheatbags on it. I also rub antiflamme in which helps sometimes.

Tebiki thanks for the post.
That could very well be the reason.

When I lost my leg in 1989 my orthopedic surgeon put me on Elavil (amitriptyline), which is a tricyclic antidepressant that also seems to work with chronic pain and PLP. I zonk out on anything that indicates "may cause drowsiness" and this is one of those meds for me. I think it helped my PLP just through knocking the hell out of me and making me sleep - well, that and IV morphine with a patient-controlled dosing pump. Elavil may work fine for others - I know several who were able to gradually increase doses of it for PLP and chronic pain and think it helps. Just too sedating for me, but then again even the newer formula of NyQuil knocks me out, so I haven't taken it in years. I've been a left AKA for 22 years now and always feel like my foot is there, but don't have PLP too much anymore. Maybe a couple times a month.

A big downside is that it can cause orthostatic hypotension (feeling dizzy/faint if you stand up too quickly), esp. with older adults so it's not often prescribed for them.

I also know from doing my Masters thesis using Julian Rotter's social learning theory on locus of control and its impact on PLP that a more traumatic amputation is more likely to have longer, ongoing symptoms. Not a hard and fast "rule", but most scholarly medical literature seems to agree on that one.

Unfortunately, I think that there's no really great way to tackle PLP, but each person finds their own way to manage with it to some extent. If there's a pain management clinic in your area that might be a place to call and ask if they have experience in treating PLP or if they know of a place that does. Best of luck.