All you infected hangnail people–you want a lemon. Squish it around a bit to release some juice then cut a hole big enough to stick the infected digit into. You think it’s going to hurt but it absolutely doesn’t, and after you leave the finger in there for an hour or so it opens up the infected area perfectly and drains all the yuck out. Wash it out, squish some neosporin on it and bandage it and in a day you won’t even know it happened. Learned the trick from a restaurant dishwasher who was constantly getting infected cuts on his hands.
I will third or fourth or whatever the broken tailbone. I missed a stair and landed ass-first on a wood floor. Damn, that hurt. The only way I could get comfortable for weeks was laying on my stomach. It hurt to sit, hurt to lay on my back, hurt to pick anything up. And there’s nothing you can really do to make it feel better.
Dammit. I didn’t even know that was a thing.
Seriously! It’s almost like one getting their nuts grazed. It takes a second to sink in and is just a deep seated bone hurt
Looks like this thread has drifted from ‘small things’ so I’ll throw in inner ear infection. I’ve gone to the emergency room twice cause i couldn’t take it.
And in any “If you time travelled to ancient times at age 10, how would you have died.” thread…“Ear infection” is my answer. That would be a horrible way to go.
Me, either – till it bitch-slapped me once in the middle of the night. Then it happened a couple more times.
Saw a doc… he explained it is a thing but mercifully rare. No insights into what causes it. I was very glad when I stopped experiencing these episodes.
Gives a whole new meaning to the expression, “tight ass.” :dubious:
I once had a tooth abscess that popped when I bit down on it.
Yes! I had one as a teenager that lasted weeks. Finally they added cough syrup with codeine to the ear drops (I mean, I drank the CSWC :)) and I wouldn’t have minded if it went on forever…
IME, the pain of a tooth abscess stops when it pops, precisely. 
There are a myriad of videos on You Tube of wounds being packed, and unpacked. It’s amazing how much they can stuff in there. :eek:
Fire ant bites are no big deal, because they sting. Other end of the critter. OK, they do bite, but that’s just to hang on while stinging.
For a pain quite a few magnitudes larger than a fire ant sting from a creature not that much bigger, try a velvet ant sting. No, really, don’t. They don’t call 'em cow killers for nothing!
I still hate that calf cramp that hits about 2am in the morning and wakes you up screaming.
I know I wouldn’t keep a loaded gun by the bed.
I have two:
I had fillings put into my furthest back lower molars as a teenager, the only cavities I ever had. Fast forward two decades, I’m chewing ice, which I know I’m not supposed to do, and I feel a cracking on the left molar. No pain really, just the sound. The next day, I am eating Doritos and apparently some of the tooth fell away at some point, and the nerve was exposed. One of the chips pointy ends went directly onto that nerve while eating them and…oh man.
Talk about a bright white flash of instant pain! It was relentless and overbearing. Next day I go to the emergency dental clinic and am presented with two options: rebuild the tooth over the course of several visits for thousands of dollars (no dental insurance at that time) or extraction for $75.
I opt for extraction, and the dentist warned me that it might be problematic, and was it ever. The tooth kept breaking into smaller and smaller shards as she tried to get it out. I spent an hour in the chair with that mouth-opening device stretching my face into a joker’s grin while she poked, prodded and excavated with what I can only call a water laser. Finally, she stopped and told me that there were still small shards buried in my gum but that their small size was beneath some acceptable threshold to leave them. It took a YEAR for the largest of the shards to work it’s way out, and it was SHARP.
You know how when you have a sore or something in your mouth and you can’t stop worrying at it with your tongue? I cut the tip of my tongue countless times working on that shard until it finally came out one day with the help of a tip of a knife and a mirror.
My other is simply the pain from appendicitis. Man is that ever crippling. Doubled over, nauseous, feverish, horrid pain. The pain of the sutures upon awakening from the appendectomy was laughably relieving by comparison.
I stepped on a tree branch last summer and it sproinged up, cartoon-style, and hit me on the side of my nose.
I figured I had hairline fractured/bruised the nose sidebone and didn’t bother to go to the ER (what are they gonna do – put a cast on my snout?)
Damn, that side of my face had a deep-seated ache for two months and it hurt like a mo-fo to do any nose-related activities (snot removal, etc).
I once, while opening mail at work, used a bit more force than necessary to pull a piece of paper out of an envelope and hit myself in the eye. Spent the next few hours weeping from one eye. It hurt to see plus there was a bunch of sand in my eye that no amount of rubbing or flushing would get out. My boss finally had someone drive me to the ER. Yeah, I paper cut my own eyeball.
The worst part was they eye-patch I had wear for a week. I tried to go to work but I couldn’t walk with it on. It gave me vertigo so bad, I felt nauseous all the time. All that from a tiny scratch.
This – and unluckily I’ve had several. I’ve had broken legs and arms that didn’t hurt as bad.
IANAD, but you made the right decision. That tooth was not salvageable.
and YEEEEOWTCH!!!
Bump on the head. Nothing. Not even worth worrying about.
Bump on the head in exactly the same spot, from exactly the same object a few seconds later.
Who knew that such a little thing could hurt so much? My eyes watered. My legs went rubbery. My breath came in short gasps.
I’ve read (some time ago, no citation) that “needles under the fingernails” is actually 10 on the scale of 1-10.
I was once on a medication that needed to be taken with food. It was a little tiny pill. And if you didn’t take it with enough food you knew it - I felt like a flaming sword had been shoved down my throat into my chest and then little flaming swords grew off it all around my chest. It was excruciating and nothing could soothe it, I just had to wait for it to pass which was like 45 minutes. Who knew such a little pill could cause so much discomfort.