Pain/illness doesn’t make me want to cry or bring involuntary tears to my eyes. Last time I can remember it doing so I was a little kid.
I’ve had bad migraines since I was 4 years old, so I think that’s why. Even injury pain doesn’t feel like a shock to my system since I’m used to having to endure hours of severe pain, vomiting, etc that I can’t control.
On the other hand I haven’t had all that much trauma to my body in my life, so it’s possible that a bad enough pain could make me have this reaction.
I was 41, I think. I woke up in the middle of the night in the most excruciating pain I had ever been in, and I had 2 kids after more than 24 hours of back labor each. Nothing I did helped at all. I finally dragged myself out of bed, stopped crying, woke up my son and we headed to the ER in our pajamas.
I had to drive, and stopped twice on the way to throw up and spent most of the time trying to convince my son I was not going to die on him (that was his big anxiety trigger) and trying not to start crying again. I must have cracked tooth enamel, I was gritting my teeth so hard…
When the EAR doctor made the pain go away by dosing me to the gills, I may have declared my undying love for him.
I’m 36, and it was just last weekend actually. One of my chronically bad knees gave out while I was climbing some concrete steps and I went down in a heap. Hit both knees on the corner of the step, nearly broke my hand when I landed on it, and hit my head on something. Don’t remember what. I just remember laying on the ground crying and my boyfriend picking me up and carrying me inside. Then I remember some ice packs and some ice cream. Stupid knees… still aren’t right.
Early 30s, and the physical pain was my wife’s (labor). Can’t remember the last time I cried because of my own (I don’t think it’s happened yet as an adult).
Somewhere in another thread a nurse said that in the recovery room, people coming out of sinus surgery seemed to be in the worst pain. So ow! I feel for you.
First off, I didn’t cry tears till I was in the 7th grade. I was born with what they called “dry eyes.” (??? I was also admitted onto a children’s ward at age 4 with what was basically malnutrition but they called it “milk anemia”…don’t know what that is either.)
But anyway, whenever I cried people either ignored me or thought I was faking. Also I had learned to cry silently due to the repercussions…so I don’t really cry at physical pain. Doesn’t do any good anyway. (By the way, I’ve learned a way to get through it. You literally go THROUGH it. Accept it, immerse yourself in it. And since you’ve quit tightening up it doesn’t really hurt so much. You still feel it, as a sensation, but it doesn’t really hurt.)
But what does make me cry is emotional pain. Since, now, it’s safe to “be heard” I beller like a cow. Anybody ever heard a cow bellowing for her calf? Well, that’s me. Deep, heaving sobs. I don’t so much cry as kind of “throw up” my pain. It’s loud. It’s scary. It feels good.
Forty-eight and it was a year and a half ago. Sciatica. I was in tears sitting. I was in tears standing. I was in tears lying down. This went on for two days before I could get into the chiropractor. It took until the third adjustment before the constant pain let up.
I’ve broken bones. I’ve had pins put in one foot and one wrist. I’ve had two root canals. I’ve had surgery with only a local antisthetic. The sciatica topped them all.
I had a biopsy earlier this year that was terrifying. They used this . . . thing that sounded like my vacuum cleaner and stuck it into my right boob. I was injected with local anesthetic but it still HURT. I could feel them poking around in there and the tiny blades whirring away . . . coupled with the engine noise in my ear, it was all I could do to keep from sobbing out loud.
Although in comparison to a lot of the stories here it seems like it was a walk in the park.
That sounds like my last time crying from pain - from a frozen shoulder. My shoulder was bugging me earlier in the day, but in the middle of the night, it started to hurt so bad that I knew it was time to go get it looked at. After a few hours in the emergency waiting room, I was crying from the pain. I couldn’t get comfortable in any position. Later that night my arm fell over the edge of the bed while I was lying in bed and I actually screamed - I’ve never screamed from pain before.
On the plus side, my recovery from the frozen shoulder was actually quicker and easier than it could have been - I suspect I might have forcibly released it with that very painful accidental stretch.
I had a snowboarding injury that brought a couple manly tears to my eyes four years ago. It was the first time I’d ever tried an actual jump, as in one that kicks you upwards, as opposed to just going forwards off a mound that drops away.
From point A to point B is called the table. Point B itself is the knuckle. I tried to slow down or something as I got to the apex and ended up launching my body horizontally. I didn’t quite clear the table and landed on the knuckle on my ribs. Fortunately I didn’t break anything, but it knocked the wind out of me like crazy, which made me gasp and my nose started running and my eyes teared up. My damn ribs hurt for 6 weeks straight.
I’m still hitting jumps these days (well, not these days as I’m still waiting for the snow), but every damn time during my approach this is somewhere in the back of my mind.
Five or six years ago, so I was about 50. My husband had committed us to doing embroidered towels for my daughter’s volleyball team, with the school initials on one end and each girl’s name on the other. He didn’t have time to do them all, although he did get a good start on them. We wanted them to be there for their first home game, so I was probably in more of a hurry than I should have been, doing the names. Somehow I missed the fact that the embroidery foot on the sewing machine had gotten a bit loose, and I had a guiding finger too close when it moved and the needle hit it. Needle then went through my index finger, fortunately beside the nail, not through it. It wasn’t a big injury, but it was very sudden, there was that big clunk, and it hurt a LOT. I cried some, and probably half an hour later I got very shaky.
Of course, if you want to count a few tears and wishing I could actually cry, there was this past week, when I hit my toe on the cast iron chicken fryer sitting on the kitchen floor and broke the toe. Total surprise, because I didn’t even really kick it. But it hurt worse then most times I’ve really actually kicked something.
Purely from pain? When I was thirteen, I was playing third base in a Jr. High PE softball game, and the very athletic shortstop threw a hard fast relay to the very slow and not athletic me. It cleared the top of my glove and smacked into my nose, breaking it and leaving my face covered in blood, snot, and tears.
I may have cried about 7-8 months ago when my gall bladder kicked up a fuss, but it wasn’t really the pain that did that, it was the confusion and despair when a little (read: “worst pain in my life”) goddamn “gas pain” simply Would. Not. Go. Away.
I was (and am) 31 years old and I was on day 4 of a 6-day migraine attack. The continous, neverending torturous pain had me sobbing; which of course made my head hurt even worse and further exacerbated the problem.
::::::::B