Prosthetic Leg Study

In the Iraq and Afghanistan war over 220,000 women served and held positions such as flying helicopters, planes, driving trucks, serving as a officer, medic and gunners which took up ninety percent of the occupations in the military. Unfortunately over 600 servicewomen were wounded; over 135 lost their lives and as few as 24 servicewomen lost a limb or more (Cater, 2012, p. 1443-1444). A voluntary study was done on six servicewomen of the Army or the Army National Guard. Out of the ten that were asked to participate was a woman with a prosthetic leg. The study was done to comprehend an understanding of the influences of an amputated leg on the women’s’ psychosocial health. The first part of the study was to interview the participants as well as gather information about each servicewoman’s experience in war. Volunteer Christine said, “you need to understand combat first before you can understand how we cope with the injuries.

1452). Christine stated, “I have phantom limb sensations all the time. For example, right now the balls of my feet and my toes are burning. They’ve got that really severe pins and needles feeling in them like they are just waking up from being asleep I can feel them all the time, 100 percent of the time. Every so often, it depends on how long I’ve been wearing my legs and how tired I am, I will get very severe phantom pains where it may feel like someone is pounding ten penny nails into the bones of my foot, my toenails are being pried off, or beads of molten lava are going down my veins” (Cater, 2012, p. 1448). Christine does not take medication for her pain, but tries to rub it out. If this did not work she endured the pain. Lisa on the other hand used the medication Lyrica to block the phantom pain. Lisa describes having an on curing pain if she does not take the drug (Cater, 2012, p.