"I just felt like I was not supposed to have my legs."

The NYT examines body integrity identity disorder.

[M]any with the disorder would go to extreme measures to get rid of the limb they consider extraneous.

In May 1998, the urge drove one man to a California surgeon who had lost his license more than 20 years earlier for several botched attempts at sex reassignment surgery. At a clinic in Tijuana, the surgeon, John Ronald Brown, 77, cut off the left leg of Philip Bondy, 79, of New York, who had paid him $10,000. Then Mr. Brown sent Mr. Bondy to a motel in a run-down section of San Diego to recover on his own.

Two days later, Mr. Bondy was dead of gangrene, and Mr. Brown was charged with second-degree murder. During the trial, newspaper reports said that Mr. Bondy had sought the operation to satisfy a "sexual craving."