These symptoms subside into a period of anesthesia. From there, cold injury progresses in a painless fashion.
Patients often describe a sensation of walking on a wooden limb.
Because of the anesthetic nature of cold injury, patients often say they were unaware that they were developing an injury. In a cold, wet environment, trenchfoot often appears. Anesthesia of the limb in trenchfoot injury comes on rapidly. Pain which does not respond to analgesia limits the deployment of soldiers with normal appearing extremities. Most patients are unaware of or do not care about the potential severity of their injury.