One morning I woke up and my left hand was gone. Not severed, not cut; no blood in the sheets, no viscera to be seen. Just a smooth stump and then an absence of hand. My first thought, of course, was that I was experiencing a very vivid dream and that upon shaking my stump a few times, closing my eyes, and rolling over in bed, I would snap awake and my hand would reappear. But this was not the case. And my hand remains absent.