Doctors amputated healthy parts of his body. The twenty-year-old was begging for help
The young man asked doctors to amputate two fingers of his left hand. He was so desperate that he planned to cut off the unwanted body parts himself (if he was refused). The case of the twenty-year-old was described in Clinical Case Reports.
The story of a young man from Canada is shocking and terrifying. The twenty-year-old had hated the fourth and fifth fingers of his left hand since he was a child. He didn't use those body parts. He tried to hide them as much as possible. He kept them bent all the time, which led to significant impairment of their dexterity. It also caused pain and general discomfort. However, he was not the one who made the man decide to amputate his fingers.
The man did not accept his fingers
The twenty-year-old didn't recognize his fingers as his own. Their presence caused him severe anxiety and did not allow him to function normally. Unwanted body parts became the heroes of nightmares that tormented the man. The patient saw his fingers rotting or burning in his dreams. He wanted to get rid of this problem at all costs. Therefore, he considered the possibility of amputating himself if he did not receive professional help from doctors. Specialists performed many neurological tests. They did not reveal any abnormalities in the structure and functioning of the brain.
It turned out that the twenty-year-old suffers from body integrity identity disorder (BIID), otherwise known as apotemnophilia or integrity dysphoria. Its main symptom is a strong and uncontrollable desire to mutilate one's body. People with BIID are not satisfied with the way they look. They do not accept their physicality. They have a sense of strangeness in their bodies. It may affect not only fingers or hands, but also other parts of the body.
Amputation as the only form of salvation
The 20-year-old attended cognitive-behavioral therapy and took psychotropic medications. They did not bring the expected result. The man continued to suffer from nightmares and could not come to terms with having hated body parts. Therefore, doctors decided to amputate the unwanted fingers.
“After the procedure, the nightmares stopped immediately. As does the emotional distress experienced by the patient. Postoperative pain subsided after a week. No phantom pain was observed,” we read in the shared report. The patient returned to normal functioning and daily activities.
