You have to choose one, and support it with some comment or statement.
If you have health problems, lets just deal with limbs now, would you rather have a limb which hurts like a 7/10 most of the time, or not have that limb at all.
So think you can walk with the limb, but your leg hurts (you can’t run)
You can catch a basketball with the arm, but you can’t lift weights
Would you go the route of losing a limb for a prosthetic and a chance (where the doctors can not offer you any percentage at all) at no pain, but also no leg or arm.
I have pseudogout in both feet, there is no cure and it randomly flares making me unable to walk on the foot. Typically it only flares on one side at a time. Between that and my knees, hips and back I am pretty gimped oout.
I have joked with my ortho that I should just have my feet cut off, but then I would probably have phantom limb syndrome that would not respond to colchicine and indocin :smack:
Keep the limb. They might find a treatment for the pain, but none of us will live to see a treatment for amputation. I’d far rather limp on a bum leg than on an artificial leg.
So long as the limb works at all, and the pain isn’t debilitating. My argument is much weaker if those two criteria are not met.
As it turns out, I just had a cousin who made this choice.
She was in a car wreck when she was in her early 20s, and her leg was shattered. From what I gather, the doctors botched fixing it, and she’s had trouble with it ever since. She’s in her late 50s/early 60s now, and has walked with a limp her whole life, and has also had a lot of pain that doesn’t respond to anything she’s tried so far.
She made the decision a month ago to get it amputated. She’s in recovery now, and from what I gather, doing pretty good. Time will tell if it’s a good decision or not, but she was pretty confident about it. I guess the pain was bad, and the docs say that she’d actually walk better with the prosthetic.
I’d 100% rather have chronic pain in a functional (if compromised) limb, if the alternative is being an amputee. Moving around is more important to me than almost anything else in life and I am quite vain (and have pretty arms and legs if I do say so myself); also phantom pain is common if you have a limb amputated.
I’ve had some chronic health issues which have been quite painful, so I’m used to dealing with pain in my daily life - and so far haven’t needed much medication for it. I endure. And I think I have a higher-than-average pain threshold.
I have virtually no cartilage in my right knee . . . it’s bone against bone, plus nerves. I’m in a great deal of pain much of the time. For various reasons, I won’t be getting it replace for another 18-24 months. But there’s no way I would ever opt to have my leg amputated. No matter how painful it is, I can still walk, and I know that eventually I’ll be getting a replacement.
If that replacement were out of the picture, I’m fairly sure I’d still keep the leg.