--is not necessarily proportional to the amount of nerve fiber loss. It seems to have more to do with the presence of acidic inflammatory substances, such as the mysterious Substance P. that appear partly as the result of the breakdown of nerve components, and with the brain's difficulty in interpreting garbled signals from damaged pathways.

Pain is often most severe during an ongoin damage process, before the nerves have completely died. Dead nerves tend to leave patches of numbness. Of course, as many have reported, it is possible to have both pain and numbness at the same time from the same area, likely representing different stages of a damaging process at slightly different dermal levels.

Also, regenerating nerves are known to be qite painful in certain circumstances, as the growth cones fight through tissue to link up with their targets; the brain also has difficulty interpreting those incomplete signals.