What Drives People to Want to Be Amputees?

ABC News ^ | 4/5/06 | Staff

[Millee]

Karl is a double amputee, but not by accident, birth or disease. He is an amputee by choice.

Six years ago, Karl (who asked that his real name not be used) sat alone in a parked car with 100 pounds of dry ice and an obsession to destroy his legs.

"The first thing I did was I used a wooden flour scoop to scoop some granulated dry ice into the bucket. … It filled the wastebasket with carbon dioxide gas, which was 79 degrees below zero," he said.

Over the next 45 minutes, Karl put his legs in the wastebasket and then kept adding dry ice until it got to the top. "I spent the next six hours well-packed in the dry ice, and then I'd add more dry ice to keep it topped off," he said. A chemistry major in college, Karl had done his research well.

"I'd done all the thermodynamic calculations, the mass of tissue, how much heat you had to subtract from that tissue to achieve freezing temperatures," he said. "And I knew that after six hours I had certainly achieved more than enough to freeze the full thickness."

After those six hours, Karl calmly drove himself to an emergency room, using the automatic hand controls he had installed in the car.

Within days, his legs began to blacken as the frozen tissue died away, and within a month surgeons had no choice but to amputate both of Karl's legs.

Karl is not a one-of-a-kind medical mystery, however. There are others like him, who believe their bodies don't match the picture of themselves they have in their minds.

[Millee]

Bizarre. I've never heard of anything like this.

[Toby06]

WOW!

There are some really sick & twisted people in this world! Thank God i only know a few hundred of them.

[thoughtomator]

There was some guy who called 911 after he took his own foot off with a circular saw... the remaining foot. The other foot he had taken off years earlier.

[jdm]

A lot of times I wish I didn't have a body either -- it just falls apart and gets sick anyway.

[Millee]

Present company excluded right??? Right?????

[najida]

Self multilation.

I'm feeling dizzy.

[freedomson]

This makes tattoos and piercing look so passe.

[Toby06]

Doll, you don't even come close!

[H. Paul Pressler IV]

Anyone can cut off their legs.

Be a Man, Cut off Your Head!

[baker_girl]

Weird!

[Millee]

Aaawwww!

[Toby06]

You don't wear a hockey helmet on the short, window-licker bus, right?

[teenyelliott]

"What the hell was I thinking?"

Pretty much sums up the whole story.

[Millee]

Honey(!), helmets muss the hair!

Besides, I don't know what a window-licker bus is. Sounds icky.

[BunnySlippers]

I read an article about this kind of thing some years ago. Bizarre in the extreme. I can't imagine wanting to be handicapped.

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

Why drives people to want to be amputees?

How about insanity?

[M1Tanker]

And I bet this person will apply for every tax-payer supported benefit he can too. And then we will be told we can't understand him, or "feel his pain". And then we will be called racists and "evil" (which coming from moral relativists is really strange) by those who say the rest of working America should pay his medical bills for the rest of his life.

I wonder how many critically injured people had to wait for treatment because of his acts? How many resources did that hospital have to expend for this self-mutilation?

It's just sick and wrong what this person did to himself and the 2nd and 3rd order effects in that hospital and ER.

But the media just eats it up.

[Toby06]

OK, you are cool.

[headsonpikes]

This is nothing compared to the voluntary lobotomies eagerly sought by so many liberal Dems!

[new cruelty]

bump

[Global2010]

It is a bus that transports the disabled to there school program.

I was a driver 20 plus years ago.

Some students wore helmets due to severe seizures to protect them when they fell.

Severe Autistic kids is what the poster was referring to window lickers.

The poster was being humorous.

But all humor aside the kids our company transported were near drowning brain injured quads, post head injury along with those mentioned above.

The severest of the severely disabled, disfigured but the best loving innocent souls you will ever meet in this world.

[Vigilanteman]

I found it fascinating that two of the three sickos featured in the article were French. The nationality of Karl is not clear, but I'll bet he's a Euroweenie too.

[Global2010]

Actually the article you posted is old news.

This link is a news story to what self mutilators are lopping off now.

(warning not for the kids viewing)

3 N.C. Men Charged With Performing Castrations
Address:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1607371/posts

[Grut]

Hey -- they own their bodies, nobody else does.

[baker_girl]

LOL!

Okay, that explains it now.

[Maximus of Texas]

I guess all guys go through this a little bit when we swim.

[Millee]

But the surgery costs an arm and a leg! Naaawwww..not gonna say it. Much too corny!

[Millee]

You want to lose your legs when your swimming??

[HairOfTheDog]

Bizarre. I've never heard of anything like this.

Insanity comes in all kinds of forms I suppose... It's not a trend just because someone at ABC news says so in an article.

[brwnsuga]

What about the story that came out the other day about the two men running a castration service. People...men... went to these guys to have ther ______ removed...

[Maximus of Texas]

Shrinkage.

[teenyelliott]

Only in cold water.

And you have NO idea how accurate your tagline is.

[Maximus of Texas]

A former friend of mine gave it to me.

(And you're right, I don't have an idea. That gland can't think, remember?)

[Deguello]

"I'd done all the thermodynamic calculations,

Did he forget to roll the windows up on the car? ^/Sarc off.

[hispanarepublicana]

I remember when I was a starving college student, and my Mom sent me the paperwork for a small life insurance policy she'd taken out on me. In the fine print, I found where if I lost a pinkie finger, the policy would pay me a sum smaller than a death benefit, but still a nice chunk of change to a starving college student. Let me tell you.....when I was counting pennies out of the couch to fill my tank so I could get to class, or when I was eating rice for the 3rd night in a week, it was tempting.

[Grut]

But the surgery costs an arm and a leg! Naaawwww..not gonna say it. Much too corny!

Not willing to go out on a limb, eh?

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

You don't wear a hockey helmet on the short, window-licker bus, right?

LOLOLOLOLOL

[teenyelliott]

Sweetums, that is not a gland.

[Deguello]

If you had watched Young Frankenstein, you would have known how to milk out that policy.

[onedoug]

Godlessness.

[Living Free in NH]

Maybe he did it for the handicapped parking privileges...

[Living Free in NH]

Maybe he did it for the handicapped parking privileges...

[cas7boys]

knowing full well that you are referring to special ed buses, i find your comment very offensive - there are a number of us on this forum who have children in spec ed - i cannot speak for them but i would prefer you not make such rude comments about my children again. thank you for your consideration...

[Toby06]

My kids ride a short bus. Chill.

[AxelPaulsenJr]

And I bet this person will apply for every tax-payer supported benefit he can too.

No doubt his first call will be to the Scooter Store.