Avi Ohry
Tel Aviv, Israel

Recently I read “How Losing My Limbs Turned Me into a Different Kind of Cook.”¹ It is the story of Yewande Komolafe, whose two-decade career as a cook came to an abrupt end when a catastrophic sickle cell crisis led to bilateral below-the-knee and upper limb amputations.

Cooking was at one time my time to reflect on the past and future as I stood stirring or watching something come together in a pan, planning articles, recipes, cookbooks. Now so much of my life is spent leaning on others. For me, making food is no longer the solitary and meditative act it once used to be.

Reading this story reminded me of Wilfred Owen’s poem “Disabled”:

He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,
And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,
Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park 
Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn, 
Voices of play and pleasure after day, 
Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him…

It further brought to mind Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell’s First World War story “The Strange Case of George Dedlow.”² Silas Weir Mitchell (1829–1914), an American physician and physiologist, also became a prolific novelist. In this short story, he describes a Union officer who “sustained a series of war wounds leading to severe nerve pain.”² Weir provides a description of “psychological and physical symptoms of phantom limb syndrome.”^2-4

Other American Civil War physician-poets also wrote about pain, wounds, and disabilities.⁵ Additional insight into the lives of soldiers who had quadruple amputations is provided by Dalton Trumbo’s (1905–1976) novel about World War One, Johnny Got His Gun, and Israeli author Yoram Kaniuk’s (1930-2013) Himmo, King of Jerusalem on the Israeli War of Independence.^6,7

Today, modern rehabilitation treatments include myoelectric and microprocessor prostheses that have allowed quadruple amputees to achieve better function.^8-11 In my fifty-two years of clinical and academic experience in rehabilitation medicine, I can recall only a few patients who had amputations of all four limbs after severe sepsis or from genetic syndromes. I also vividly recall a new immigrant from Russia, who like millions had been incarcerated in the Siberian gulags and whose four limbs had been amputated due to severe cold injury. He regained some functional independence after a bilateral Krukenberg operation in Russia, a procedure that is now considered controversial but is still occasionally performed, which converts a forearm stump into a pincer.¹²

References

1. Komolafe Y, How Losing My Limbs Turned Me into a Different Kind of Cook. New York Times, February 4, 2026, 1-2.
2. Kline DG, Silas Weir Mitchell and “The Strange Case of George Dedlow.” J Neurosurg 41(1):E5.
3. Silas Weir Mitchell, The strange case of George Dedlow. Atl Mon 18:1–11, 1866.
4. Bourke J, The art of medicine Silas Weir Mitchell’s The Case of George Dedlow. Lancet, 2009; 373: 1332-3.
5. Ohry A, A glimpse into the world of some American physicians-poets. Int J Arts Med, 1999;6(1):10-21.
6. Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun, J. B. Lippincott Company. 1939.
7. Yoram Kaniuk, Himmo, King of Jerusalem. London, Chatto & Windus, 1969. 
8. Kitowski VJ, Leavitt LA, Rehabilitation of a quadruple amputee. South Med J, 1968;61(9):912-4.
9. Monné Cuevas P, Borrás Correa A, Vidal Fortuny E, Ángeles Diaz Vela M, Calvo Sanz J. Traumatic quadruple amputee rehabilitation: from amputation to prosthetic functionality: a case report. Disabil Rehabil Assist Technol, 2021;16(1):112-118.
10. Davidson J, Champion S, Cousins R, Jones L. Rehabilitation of a quadruple amputee subsequent to electrical burns sustained whilst hang gliding. Disabil Rehabil, 2001;23(2):90-5. 
11. Kim Y, Oh Y, Shin S, Oh D, Cho SI, Jeong J, Yoo J. End-Effector Robot-Assisted Gait Training in Quadruple Amputees: Two Case Reports. Ann Rehabil Med. 2025;49(6):437-441.
12. Krukenberg procedure. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krukenberg_procedure