When I was 14 years old, a normal day at school set a precedent for the next ten years of my life that I could not have anticipated. I suffered a bout of acute torticollis, sometimes referred to as ‘wryneck’, where the muscles supporting the neck go into spasm.

My torticollis – and I’ll lay claim to it, as it has been a free passenger for so many years – was classed as acute because it happened suddenly. I was at school in the morning feeling perfectly fine, and by the evening I was rushed to A&E in an ambulance. 

According to NHS Inform, chronic pain is “any pain that continues for longer than 3 months, either as part of another health condition, or despite investigations and treatment”. It is not as high of a threshold as one might expect, which helps put into perspective just how abnormal it is to feel any kind of long-term pain.