"One should be able to distinguish between one's own body and what parts belong to the body and what does not...... But this leg, something is wrong...... It's not real, I don't feel it, I don't feel like it belongs to me. ”

These are not the words of a group of patients who suddenly appeared in Dongzhou today, but the description of their own symptoms by a patient with somatoagnosia more than 30 years ago.

Somatic agnosia, a rare neurological syndrome, is almost the opposite of phantom limb syndrome – more than 80% of amputees can still feel their lost limb long after the wound has healed. Some may even have "phantom limb pain", in which the patient feels that the amputated limb is still present and pain occurs there.

The existence of these conditions proves that the nervous system directly restricts the ability of human beings to perceive their own bodies.

It is not the body itself, but the nervous system, that determines how many limbs a person feels about and how well they feel.

But what exactly is the mechanism of this nervous system? How do you play these roles in the human brain?

For a long time, the medical community has been trying to find out clearly, but there has been a lack of scientific rational explanations.

Now, Gu Jun is also unable to explain to patients and peers what is happening at the moment.

In the isolation ward area on the 9th floor of the Psychiatric and Psychological Building, the base of the Dongzhou Tianji Medical Department, there is already a patient with "alien hand" living in each of the 37 independent wards, and their painful cries continue to come out, resounding in the corridor, and there are gradually some delirium words born of torture.

In less than a day, 37 patients have been treated in hospitals in Dongzhou, and there may be many more patients who have not yet been diagnosed and have not yet sought medical treatment.

They showed the same symptoms, all of them were unexplained pain in the right upper limb, which quickly became agnosia-agnosia within 3-8 hours, and the pain intensified, and the blood flow was blocked in multiple blood vessels in the affected limb, which was relieved by thrombolytic drugs, but the pain was even worse. In addition, from agnosia, the patient is eager to have the affected limb removed by amputation.

Heterodysesis seeks amputation as a symptom that is very similar to another very rare form of delusional disorder:

BodyIntegrityIdentityDisorder.

People who unfortunately lose a limb due to an accident will always miss the time when their limb was able, but BIID patients are the opposite, they always long for a limb in their body to be amputated - it does not belong to them, they were born without it, or they suddenly don't want it, it doesn't matter if this is called a disability or not, they think that this is normal, and only by getting rid of the affected limb can they realize their true and complete selves, and only then can they be happy.

Usually the affected limb is one of the four limbs, but sometimes there are two, three, or even four.

In order to achieve this goal, if the doctor does not agree to the amputation, they often resort to self-injurious behaviors that patients with somatoagnosia do not have, such as crashing a car, freezing their legs to death with ice water, or even self-amputation.

This mental illness has not been recognized and named for a long time, and its pathology is still a mystery for the time being, and there are only hypotheses as to whether it is a mental illness caused by purely external factors or a brain dysfunction caused by nervous system disorders.

At present, the most effective treatment for BIID, the most effective way to relieve the patient's pain and improve the patient's quality of life, is to amputate the patient's leg.

Gu Jun came to the outside of one of the wards, and several members of the team next to him also stopped, looking at the patients inside through the glass window.

The patient's name is Zhou Yibao, 21 years old, a junior at Jehua University, and he is the first patient to seek medical attention for anodysphoria.

At that time, Li Ruiquan, an emergency doctor who was seeing Zhou Yibao, noticed the abnormality and notified the hospital to immediately report to the Tianji Bureau.

Why them? What is the pathogenesis? What do these patients, young and old, have in common? Is heterodyssis contagious?

The Department of Medicine is still trying to figure out these questions.

As for the treatment, the medical department does not come up with much solution, even if the BIID is indeed due to a neurological abnormality, but there is no proof of any neurological abnormality.

Therefore, lobotomy and nerve damage surgery to quench thirst are not suitable - and instead of destroying the brain and causing unknowable and irreversible damage, it is better to have an amputation, after all, you can still have a high quality of life without losing a hand, and you can install a prosthetic.

Psychological treatments such as cognitive behavioral therapy and aversion therapy are commonly used to deal with ordinary BIID, but the effect is not great.

The psychological team has tried these methods for patients with anodystrophy, and has also injected tranquilizers into some patients, Zhou Yibao is one of them, but the patients have not been able to calm down, but have become more and more intense.

This situation is very similar to the pain of a patient with heterosmosis who feels that the affected skin area has been itching.

People with anodysphoria are tormented by their own rejection of the hand, and they are about to go crazy.

Of course, Gu Jun knew that this was not an ordinary BIID, it was not something that happened naturally, it was the negative selection force, the black goat cubs......

After thinking about this, when his heart was messy, Gu Jun opened the door of the ward.

Suddenly, there was an inexplicable impact in his right hand, as if he sensed something.

"Ah......" Zhou Yibao, a patient who was fixed on the hospital bed with his whole body, saw this group of medical staff in protective clothing walking in, and immediately shouted more excitedly, his eyes were full of bloodshots, "Quickly amputate my leg, cut off this hand, it's not mine, it's really not my ......"

The patient's right upper limb is particularly strengthened because to promote blood circulation, the binding area is not large, that is, the upper arm, elbow, and forearm are all handcuffed.

This not only prevents the hand from getting out of control, but also prevents the patient from self-harming, as the patient has previously treated with a pen-stabbed position on the back of the hand.

Gu Jun looked at the strange hand wrapped in white gauze, and there seemed to be a hallucination flashing in front of him, as if he was dissecting the giant severed limbs of a black goat cub by the dissecting table, and standing on the side of the dissecting table looked like someone else......

At this time, the patient's hand pulled violently, and the iron cuffs clanged loudly, and several iron cuffs seemed to be about to break.

"Cut it, cut it down......" The patient suddenly became even more frenzied.

Gu Jun clenched his right hand, as he had clenched when he was on the side of the mountain stream in Shidong Mountain, suppressing the inexplicable movement.

Uncle Dan and a few others next to him were also very helpless, and they went through the routine procedures for dealing with abnormal powers, but they didn't get results.

However, there is not much time left in the medical department, the patients are affected by painful stimuli, heart rate, blood pressure and other indicators are in the danger zone, the test results of multiple organs such as liver and kidney are not optimistic, and the dissolution and anticoagulant effect of the affected limb is declining.

"Ah Jun, do we have to consider having an amputation?" Uncle Egg asked in a low voice.

It is not a solution, an experimental treatment method, maybe the patient will still have phantom limb pain after amputation of the affected limb, or the limb will be removed.

These days, the doctors, and many clinicians, are also incapable of curing patients in many cases, but they can work hard to make the patients survive and survive better......

Gu Jun took a deep breath, didn't say half a word for a long time, and there seemed to be a treacherous sound in his ears.

You're going to have a lot of chances to have surgery, surgery, will you still have surgery......

"I recommend trying an artificial coma for the patient first." Gu Jun said in a deep voice, there is a demon that I don't know where, and I can't follow the demon's wishes, otherwise there will never be a good result, "In addition, I want to go and observe a right upper limb amputation with other causes." ”