How does it feel?

A couple of years ago I was walking across a ploughed field when I was struck by such a searing pain in my left foot that I fell to the ground, moaning in harmony with the rooks above me. After half an hour of massaging my toes I was able to hobble the half-mile home.

As this seemed to be no ordinary pain, I went to the doctor, who had no exact explanation, but referred me to the hospital. ‘A damaged nerve,’ they said. ‘Needs to be scanned.’ But three appointments were cancelled, and the foot attacks came frequently, so with reluctance I went privately to an orthopaedic consultant in Oxford. He immediately diagnosed a neuroma — a benign tumour on a nerve between two bones. I looked at the enlarged nerve on his ultrasound machine, some 6mm instead of 3mm. Twice I had anti-inflammatory injections, ‘which usually work’. Not on me, they didn’t.