Patients who undergo an amputation often feel a sensation where the missing limb was as if it's still there. 

The syndrome is called phantom limb. 

It's as if the body can't accept that a terrible trauma has occurred. The mind is trying to make the body complete again. 

Patients who experience phantom limb report many different sensations but by far the most common is pain. 

The body can be stubborn when it comes to accepting change. 

The mind holds out hope that the body can be whole again and the mind will always fight for hope, until it finds a way of understanding its new reality and accepts that what is gone is gone forever.