Auch! I stubbed my pinky toe very hard against the edge of o table from where a big flower pot crashed over the same foot! This happened six hours ago, whith unbelievable excruciating pain. This time I managed not to cry until a sadistic doctor decided to set my bones without ANY anaesthetic, twisting and squeezing my swollen foot for five minutes of pure agony!
The pain was expected and so I was prepared to it and I tried to mantain my composure, so I didn’t really cry but I couldn’t help the tears from streaming down my cheeks and, at the end, bad sentences addressed to the doctor. I really hated her.
This is the first time in my life that physical pain makes my cry (i think to have a quite high pain tolerance, I had kidney stones many times, I broke my ankle, and dislocated a shoulder in the past without shedding a tear) and I fell a little bit ashamed.
I’m 44…
I think I’m quite similar in the pain tolerance department, but what got me was tooth pain. Really.
I had an appointment for a Monday morning for a root canal and things were going along mostly swimmingly until the Friday night beforehand. I woke up in the night in pain and went downstairs so I didn’t bother my husband with my fidgeting. I was lying with my face on an ice pack because I couldn’t hold it anymore, and the usual OTC pain killers were not working. I was whimpering and I knew it and felt stupid, and at one point my husband came downstairs because I was crying. He was beside himself with worry since I don’t cry with pain. I didn’t feel it was worth waking the on-call dentist, so I waited until 8:30 a.m. to call. He suggested antibiotics instead of heavy duty pain killers. I spent the whole weekend thinking that the dentist probably thought I was a drug-seeker, but the antibiotics did help pretty quickly.
When I was 32(ish), I had the mucus membranes inside my nose frozen in an attempt to alleviate my permanently stuffy nose. It didn’t work ultimately, but once my nose started unfreezing it produced a massive searing headache on the subway on the way home and that was enough to bring tears to my eyes.
21 years old. Horrible tooth pain. It wasn’t the level of the pain (though it was the most painful thing I’ve experienced thus far) so much as the relentlessness of it. It got to a point where I was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to go to sleep but the pain made it impossible. I wasn’t bawling but yeah, my eyes definitely got moist for a little while there.
35, nerve conduction test, that is: sticking needles into my nerves (leg to butt) and then sending electrical shocks into my nerves. Done by a doctor with a German accent no less!
The problem leading to this torture was a palm-sized numb patch on my right calf. Talk about the cure being worse than the disease, except it wasn’t even a cure, just a diagnostic test. Diagnosis? “We don’t know, but it’s none of the serious things we can test for, you’re probably fine.” It went away, but not without leaving me with a permanent reluctance to consult doctors.
That depends. If you mean the pain just brought tears to eyes, then probably when i smashed my finger with sledgehammer on a jobsite. If you mean it actually made me cry, then I have no idea, not since I was a young child certainly.
As above, do you mean it brought tears to my eyes, or that it made me sob?
Any sudden, unexpected, sharp pain will still bring tears to my eyes and make me feel really, really sorry for myself for a few moments. I tripped and fell on the hardwood floor, and landed square on my knees, just a couple of weeks ago and that did it. Falling down stairs does that. Tripping on a cement sidewalk and bruising my kneecap did it.
Expected pain doesn’t do that. I can brace myself and deal with it.
I cry when something hurts really bad without any shame. Now this may sound silly, but I sliced my finger open on the Saran wrap box blade not too long ago. It was a jagged, deep cut, and it bled and bled and bled, and I actually sobbed while I was washing it. It actually left a small scar on my finger, that’s how deep it was.
As Sattua says, it was at least 50% the fact that it was so goddamn unexpected that made me cry. Who the hell expects to cut themselves open on the Saran wrap box blade? But now that I look at it, it is way too sharp for the wrap.
Aged 55, last year after my knee replacement, several times. Certainly when I was trying to lie down to sleep but the pain when I was lain down was so excruciating that I kept having to sit up again and I was so tired and frustrated (in the end I spent two months sleeping in a chair). Also a couple of times when I accidentally knocked or twisted it it brought tears to my eyes.
57 or 58. A long, frustrating day - involving the toilet leaking through the ceiling into my bedroom, drenching a box of important family papers and several library books. We had wills, birth certificates, marriage licenses, title abstracts all over the house drying. Mid afternoon I’d gone next door to borrow water so we could boil some noodles and when I was draining the noodles I spilled the hot water on myself. A bit of loud complaining, but no tears.
Last thing at night, I decided to go deal with the soggy ruined library books. It was an annoying complicated process and the late-night librarian was frustrated and confused. As near as she could tell they needed lots of $$ for the damage but couldn’t let me keep the ruined books. With a flash of insight, I took the wet books out to the car, went back in, told her the books were lost. With relief she smiled, knowing just what to do, took my check (for less money) and closed up shop. SO (I promise we’re getting to the tears), SO
I went back to the van, opened the sliding door to the back seat, tossed in my purse on the seat on top of the wet soggy books, and in fit of frustration slammed the sliding door shut–on my fingers. The crushed nails and swelling, the frustration, the pain–I burst into tears, bordering on hysteria. Idon’t know how long the sobs lasted–10 minutes at least–before the hysteria turned to manic laughter…
About a month and a half ago I did something horrible to my back using the rowing machine. I woke up at about 3:30am in crazy pain right between my shoulder blades. The pain was relentless, and then the nausea kicked in, and I basically spent the day alternating between writhing on the couch and throwing up in the toilet. Pain meds couldn’t even touch it. After about the 15th straight hour of this, I finally broke down and started to cry. It well and truly sucked, and I have nothing but empathy for those who suffer chronic back pain.
I was 25. I was being catheterized in conjunction with a medical procedure. For reference, any man who has ever gotten soap in the end of his urethra can tell you that it burns like a mofo. OK, so sliding a catheter in makes your entire urethra feel like that.
Wait, I’m not crying yet. She got the tip of this thing as far as my prostate, but couldn’t pass it through; it kept buckling. So she pulled it out (more burning), and selected a LARGER one that was more resistant to buckling. She got it in as far as my prostate (again with the burningburningburning) and forced it through and up into my bladder. Passing it through (and stretching the bajeezus out of) my prostate was, um, severely painful.
I wasn’t sobbing, but my eyes were seriously teared up, and I was only barely able to avoid openly weeping.
28, probably three weeks ago? I hit my head on a cabinet door in the bathroom. Sharp corner to scalp = sit down on the (closed) toilet and sob for about 20 seconds. I cry easily, especially if overwrought or if my blood sugar is low, and a sharp, unexpected pain will generally bring on at least brief tears. I don’t fight it unless I’m at work or somewhere where I don’t want to freak people out. I have found that I get over it quicker if I can just let the crying happen and resolve itself rather than trying to stifle it and push through. A little cry and it’s all over.
I don’t feel ashamed of this, it’s just how I react. I do try to avoid having people feel like they need to do something for me, since it’s pretty natural to try to help someone who’s crying - this is why I try really hard not to do it at work.
I broke my nose in March of this year while skiing. Ski patrol helped me down the mountain and the gush of blood had slowed to a trickle. I was fine until we got into the car and I looked down at my ski jacket and pants and saw blood on them, then I cried. I’m not sure if it was from pain (it hurt a lot worse later on in the day), disappointment that I had ruined my vacation, or that the adrenaline rush was gone and I realized I really did hurt myself, but I did cry the whole way back to the house.
It depends on what you mean by cry. I’ve had a few instances where pain has brought tears to my eyes, but didn’t actually include any weeping or whimpering or whatever, so I’m not sure that would really count. I’m sure I had a few tears in my eyes when I broke bones or dislocated or whatever.
However, I did have one injury, where I slipped a disc in my lower back and was in sharp throbbing pain constantly and any wrong movement would send a shooting pain from that point down both legs. It was worst at some point the day after I did it when the muscles around it had swollen up and all and I couldn’t move and I was just laying in bed all day trying to sleep through it. Eventually I had to get up to use the bathroom and I ultimately had to drag myself there because even attempting to straighten up was excrutiating and literally paralyzing and I’d fall down. It took me about 45 minutes to do it and by the time I did finally manage to get back into bed, my eyes were full of tears and I definitely full out wept. It was easily the most physical pain I’ve ever been in and the only time I remember actually feeling so completely overwhelmed by physical pain that I cried.
Oh, forgot to include my age. This would have been when I was about 26 I think.
