I’ve had kidney stones and several migraines that sent me to the ER. (Thankfully, not at the same time.)
I’d rather have the kidney stones.
Nothing worse than the feeling of pain in your head that’s driving you nuts and you can’t get out or make better and then blurrrggggg…
When I would get migraines that bad, I would think of an animal caught in a trap that decides to gnaw off its own paw to escape. And I’d think about gnawing off my own head.
Poysyn is right about not being able to actually sleep with a really bad migraine. I used to just go to bed and kind of…lie there and drift. But not into a refreshing sleep or anything, just a weird floaty it-kind-of-hurts-but-I-can’t-be-arsed-to-care space.
With the kidney stones, the very nice people at the ER gave me a shitload of morphine or something and I passed out for a few hours there, then several more hours at home.
Tell you what is awesome, root canal work with the anaesthetic not working correctly. It has happened twice to me (it is possible I require more than the usual amount, the dentist explained it to me about how it is a bell curve with some requiring less and some requiring more) and left me petrified of the dentist.
Really, it’s painful? I’ve got it too and it’s come on strong over the last 9 months but so far it’s just tingling and numbness, not pain. It’s a annoyance and generates some apprehension. If it turns painful that’s certainly gonna suck big time.
The worst I’ve experienced were shingles, gout, ulcers and broken bones. Judging by other responses I’ve gotton off relatively easy, it would appear.
The worst pain I’ve ever felt was during the process of having a frozen shoulder. When my arm would move in just the wrong way, the pain would immediately drop me to my knees. Fortunately, it always subsided quickly. If it had been protracted, I would have put a gun to my head.
I’ve had two kidney stones, and in neither case did I experience more than mild discomfort. But my brother and sister have both been laid low multiple times, requiring hospitalization.
So, I’ve had 1)unstable angina and a heart-attack, 2)gall bladder (bile duct obstruction leading to emergency cholecystectomy), 3)gout (two episodes so far). Most painful? Three way tie. Most scary? The angina/heart attack pain. But when I didn’t just keel over dead, I assumed I was being a pussy and it was just bad indigestion.
The angina was very intermittent. Every few nights for maybe fifteen minutes each time. Sweating, clenching pain; hard to believe I didn’t realize it was serious. The gallbladder pain was nonstop, keeping me awake for 48 consecutive hours. That was why I sought medical care; the horrible lack of sleep. The gout pain is just fucking awful, but you know it isn’t life threatening so fuck it.
I’ve always considered myself somewhat of a wimp when it comes to pain, but I might need to reconsider. I’ve also had fractured metacarpals and a few lacerations requiring surgical closure.
Never passed a kidney stone, but gimme enough opiates and I’m sure I could.
I thought cluster headaches were the worst, but I think those are painful due to the trigeminal nerve. So maybe as a general rule of thumb, trigeminal neuropathy is the worst pain a person can suffer from. If so I’d wonder why that nerve senses pain worse than other nerves.
Makes me wonder if any dictatorships have ever attempted to torture people by electrocuting that nerve. I’d hate to think of it.
I’m assuming injuries don’t apply and we’re talking non-injury conditions like diseases.
I would guess cluster headaches, kidney stones and gallstones, and bone cancer. I’m very grateful to never have suffered any of those.
Don’t assume that. Injuries and trauma can certainly hurt but they don’t generally rank that high on the pain scale at least until much later. A lot of people get shot, stabbed or lose a limb without evening knowing it until they are told or verify it visually.
The human body is well-equipped to deal with sudden, acute pain. Either the nerves themselves get destroyed or the brain releases endorphins to quell the sensation for a while. Chronic, deep pain generally ranks much higher on the pain scale.
I haven’t been hurt or sick for a while but I came down with a case of food poising just after a trip I just took this past Monday. The intestinal cramping was incredible. I spent most of the day at work doubled over and literally crying in the bathroom. I left work early and was really concerned that I would not make it home because I was in so much pain. The pain interfered with even basic attention to anything else and made me feel completely faint at random intervals. That certainly wan’t the worst pain that I have ever been through but it was a reminder that it can be that bad if the pain is very deep and persistent.
Chondrocalcinosis - the first attack was probably the worse I have had in the past 7 years. 4 cm edema top and bottom of foot, I normally sleep with one or both feet out from under the covers, and the cat jumped onto the foot of the bed, landing on my foot. It had slowly and gently inflated while I was asleep. I had no fucking clue what had happened, and it scared the hell out of my husband because I was crying from the pain after waking the house screaming. It took the ER, several blood tests, imaging and some creative cutting to get the diagnosis. Yay me, there is no way to not trigger pseudogout like tere is with real gout. I do know tht when I get certain very mild sensations a flare is on the way, and if I hit the colchicine and NSAIDs of choice, I can block the flare from being too horrendous and just whacked funnybone level pain.
Hormone driven migraines, when you have PCOS that keeps the hormones pumping so you not only have a 20 day migraine, you are bleeding out your crotch to the tune of an ounce of menses per 2 hours at the same time. Yay. Thank fucking god for the ovarian tumor that let my OB be able to gut me without the fucking religious assholes telling me that even though I was 48, I shouldn’t get a hysterectomy, I might still want to pop out a kid before God shuts down my ovaries … if I could have had my reproductive system ripped out of me when I was 20 I would have been fucking spared close to 30 years of torment. Fuck religion. Keep your fucking book out of my crotch. I am not Christian/Jewish/Muslim, and I don’t give a flying fuck what you believe in, leave me the fuck alone.
I am not unaccustomed to pain - chondrocalcinosis in both feet, and it is creeping into my right ankle, osteoarthritis in both knees, with my right patellar tendon having a bout of tendonitis right now, femoral acetabular impingements in both hip sockets, impingements on both sides of my sacrum, lumbar stenosis, and a bunch of other injuries from m youth catching up with me. I think the cubital tunnel is more of a pain than the carpal tunnel though.
Well, the most painful condition I’ve experienced so far was pleurisy. …Honestly, there’s really no way I can perfectly sum up just how painful it was. It was like…I don’t know…someone stabbing me with an ice pick in my left lung and then proceeding to stab me all over my body, particularly my upper back. I could hardly breathe because breathing was a big trigger to set off the pain.
Actually, I’m pretty certain I thought I was dying at one point. lol
I had one bout of it about 15 years ago.
One night, out of no where, I woke up in excruciating white-hot pain. I actually thought that I was dying and this is how “death” felt. I managed to gently fall to the floor and crawl weeping with pain to the bathroom to pee. {The effort took at least 15-20 minutes}
My poor wife was freaking out and thankfully the doc shot me up with painkillers and some heavy duty anti-inflammatory drugs. In a day or so, it was like it never happened.
I’ve broken my arms three times and I’d rather break them three more times than go
through the torture of sciatica again…
.
Sounds like the first time I had kidney stones. No clue what the pain was and thought I was dying. I went through a mental checklist while in anguish that started with: heart attack and then I realized the pain was lower back near my kidney, oh crap my kidney failed. No wait that doesn’t make sense, crap what the hell is this.
Any trauma to an area where there are a lot of nerve endings- especially in the mouth. As a little kid, I put something in my mouth that was metal and had sharp “claws” on it. It dug deep into my cheek. And what’s worse, the only way to get it out was to open it up and release the claws. I spit out blood for a day and the the pain throbbed for a week or so. Then it still hurt for a coupe weeks after that. I also has some pretty excruciating pain with a couple of wisdom teeth I had out. Both of them were cut out and broken up to remove them, and they must have left the nerves exposed. Eating was very difficult, drinking was extremely painful because everything felt either boiling, freezing, or was just plain irritating to the nerves. I had to double up on Vicodin just to keep from crying and so the pain would diminish enough that I could fall asleep. Then the blood clot would come out every so often, so I was spitting out lots of blood and it started all over again.
I’ve had the following and never needed any pain meds:
Broken elbow
Fractured skull
Shingles
Surgery to correct septum of nose
Carpal tunnel surgery both hands
Ruptured disk in lumbar spine and resulting surgery
All four wisdom teeth cut out of jaw
But my menstrual cramps were so severe that if I didn’t take medication I would end up either blacking out or (literally) banging my head against the wall. The pain wasn’t just in my abdomen, either: it cramped my p***y lips and ran down the insides of both legs and into the soles of my feet.
The day after my hysterectomy was the happiest of my life.
I’ve broken my nose and split my scalp open twice, needing stitches both times. I think I had a local anesthetic for the stitches (as I was a kid I didn’t ask, the doctor just sprayed something cold on my face). I broke four ribs and the (Chinese) hospital wouldn’t give pain meds, so my girlfriend bought some ibuprofen for me.
The time I did need LOTS of pain medication was a misdiagnosed cranial abscess, that was more painful than anything I’d had before or since. The three doctors, two ER medics, and several Ear, Nose & Throat specialists all said ‘migraine - it’ll go away when your ear infection clears up’. :smack: I’d never had a migraine before. I needed brain surgery twice, followed by ear surgery, and in between I was unconscious for a fortnight with severe blood poisoning.
Make sure you follow up on that ear infection, folks
I wouldn’t wish migraine on anyone, no matter how much I detest that person. When I have a severe attack, I can’t even lie down because it hurts to much to be horizontal. I sit very still and wait for the worst of it to pass.