Malade imaginaire

In competition no. 2494 you were invited to submit a poem written by a hypochondriac about a minor ailment.
Many of you alluded to the fact that the internet is fertile hunting-ground for the hypochondriac, providing limitless scope for self-diagnosis. Cyberchondria sends hordes of the worried well to their GPs brandishing wads of incontrovertible downloaded ‘evidence’. What hypochon-driacs crave above all else, of course, is vindication. To doubting doctors, spouses, friends and family, the message rang out loud and clear: ‘You’ll be sorry…’ — or, as the epitaph on Spike Milligan’s gravestone reads, ‘I told you I was ill’.
The winners, printed below, get £30 each. The bonus fiver goes to a restrained W.J. Webster, who resisted the lure of comedy ailments such as flatulence and halitosis; the less said about Basil Ransome-Davies, the better.

I have this slight but nudging ache
That never settles in one place:
A symptom doctors might mistake
For some quite different, trivial case.
Is it the drifting iceberg tip
Of something dark submerged below
Or, like some Eden apple pip,
The seed of horrors yet to grow?
A range of ailments, so it’s said,
May start with such a warning sign,
But in the Googlegook I’ve read
The other features don’t match mine.
I sometimes fear the search to find
What lies behind this wandering twinge
Will crack the workings of my mind
And leave it hanging from one hinge.
W.J. Webster

My left little finger is proving a curse,
By taking (obliquely) a turn for the worse.
An old sporting injury makes me remember
The chronic afflictions I’ve had in this member.
Or could it be something perniciously fresh
Like Thingummy’s Syndrome, distorting my flesh?
That part’s prone to damage, so near to the edge,
Resembling indeed the thin end of a wedge.
By sticking out sideways it’s bound to get hurt
And bump against objects infected with dirt.
If