If you are living with burning, tingling, or numbness spreading through your foot and ankle, chances are you have already been told to rest, use orthotics, and perhaps try a cortisone injection. Some people improve.

For many people, the path to a cryoglobulinemia diagnosis is long and indirect. The symptoms — joint pain, persistent fatigue, skin purpura that worsens in cold weather, tingling in the hands or feet, occasional kidney changes — often surface years before the underlying condition is identified.

Tingling that starts in the toes and creeps upward. A burning sensation at night that no position fixes. Feet that feel like they're wrapped in cotton, or hands that fumble buttons they used to manage without thinking.

If you have tarsal tunnel syndrome, you already know the odd vocabulary of it: the burning along the sole, the electric zing that shoots into the arch or toes when you stand too long, the numbness that shows up at night for no reason you can name.

If you have landed here, you are probably not looking for a dictionary definition. You may be dealing with numb feet that feel like they are wrapped in cotton, a strange loss of balance in the dark, tingling that climbs up the legs, or a lab result that finally gave a name to months of vague symptoms.

If you've been told your tibial nerve pain is "just" tarsal tunnel syndrome, or that it will settle down with rest, and it hasn't, you already know how unsatisfying that explanation feels. Nerve pain in the ankle and foot rarely has one clean cause.