Phantom Limbs

My Grandmother often complained of excruciating pain coming from her finger which had been amputated five years prior. Well, the first few months I did understand but as years went by I started wondering if the pain was ever going to reside. some people said it was her way of getting attention, but knowing her I knew there had to be more to it than met the eye. A couple of years after she died I decided to find out if there were other people who experienced pain on missing limbs and came to the knowledge that not only is this true but also that it could affect people with congenially absent limbs.
Much as the scientific explanations could be right (most of them are still under research), what blew my mind was people born without a limb(s) can experience pain or a sense of touch where the Original should have been. Scientific studies using functional MRI show activity in the brain area that controls the area that is missing, such that the person can experience tactile sensations when the brain is tricked to see the missing limb as present. This is mostly done by use of a computer generated imagery or mirroring the present limb. Back to my Grandmother I noticed she would feel the pain whenever she paid attention to her missing finger, at times she would complain of numbness in her phantom finger which when massaged would feel better . I cannot begin to imagine how she felt going through life knowing her truth with almost nobody believing her. Having said that I my convictions on the power of the brain with regard to the messages fed to it. I have always believed that we can make our own realities and science is proving that too.