Bladder infection causing sharp, stabbing pains in my mid-back. That was bad. First time that I’ve ever been nauseous from the pain - I didn’t really believe that that could happen. I do now. Call it a 6.5, maybe 7.
Small cut/abrasion on my eyeball. That really sucked. Stabbing head pains every time I happened to glance at anything too bright, plus itchy scratchy irritated red eyes, plus a monster headache at the end of the day. We’ll call that a 7, 7.5.
Those are the worst I’ve had so far.
I was in labor with a herniated disc in my lower back. I had to walk laps around the hospital floor to “get things moving” - I can’t describe the pain. It was like nothing I’ve ever known. I was fine after the eipdural, but after getting home the disc pain was so bad I had to crawl around the house or hold onto the wall to get around. Thankfully, I finally went to the doctor and 2 weeks of Vicodin and NSAIDS wiped it out.
I should add, it was about a 9. 10 would be unimaginable 
I totally believe that. As a single point of data, my gallstone attacks approached the level of labor, but I’ve heard that pancreatitis is much worse than simple gallstones.
I had something like that with the wisdom teeth removal. (BTW, not a 10 - about 6 maybe.) It still hurt, but I didn’t care. I think of it as the SEP drug. (Somebody Else’s Problem - I’m a HHGG fan.)
My own personal approach to 10 was a concussion when I was ten. Part of that could have been that a ten year old doesn’t have the resources to deal with pain that an adult would, but it was still an unremitting pain that didn’t stop. The blurred vision and inability to say certain words was also upsetting, although I didn’t have much energy to put into being upset.
The doctors gave me an injection to stop the vomiting, once that started, and then joked that I had thrown it up. Being ten, I took that literally, and wasn’t sorry because right at the peak of a heave, the pain in my head would lessen. It was a glorious second of relief.
An illustration of how bad it hurt, and, I guess, how much it weakened me, was that I had my first ever blood draw and didn’t really care even though the guy doing it had to try three times and really went fishing. It hurt, just not enough to matter over the pain in my head.
Fortunately, there was also some memory loss. I remember the events at school, where it happened, and at the doctors’ office, then going to the hospital. But from the time we got into the hospital elevator until the next afternoon never entered long term memory, I guess. As in, on that next afternoon, I couldn’t remember anything from after the elevator. Can’t say I missed it.
Trigeminal neuralgia. There’s a reason they call it “the suicide disease.”
Man, I don’t wish that experience on anyone. At one point I was laying on the flooring begging the dog to kill me. Being a good doggy she didn’t.
Went to the hospital. Never got painkillers. That reminds me that they never offer me anything stronger than Tylenol 3. Some people seem to be offered freakin’ morphine at the drop of the hat. There was a girl in the bay next to me with a cracked rib and they offered her dilaudid.
I don’t get it.
My worse pain ever was puncturing my calf on a dirt bike kick-starter. I put all my might into kicking that starter, I had my entire body weight on it, but my foot slipped as I was going down and the end of the kick starter impaled my leg a good inch deep. Really dark meat oozed out of the hole (like a gut wound).
The pain brought tears to my eyes and caused my legs to buckle. I’d say it was about a 7.
I’ve had various injuries, torn LDL, dislocated shoulder, torn calf muscle, but the winner hands down was post abdominal surgery. There were three trocar holes (the instruments they put in for laparascopic surgery) and a 3 inch incision. All four cut through abdominal muscle. Now imagine waking up and starting to dry heave in reaction to the anesthetic. 5 minutes straight (at least) of full abdominal muscle tension in pulses about every 5 seconds. The person two beds over, behind two curtains, called the nurse and said hey i think that guy needs some help. He could hear the huuuunh, pant, pant, pant, huuunh and knew it wasnt good.
I can imagine worse, but I try not to.
Every now and then - perhaps every other month or so - I experience a very, very sharp pain in my left ear. I’ve never bothered really trying to figure out what causes it, becaue it’s never lasted more than thirty seconds, tops, and once the pain goes away, it’s gone. But while the pain is there, it is absolutely, completely incapacitating. I’ll cry out from the pain, and if I’m standing, I’ll fall down. My sister was with me when one of these things hit me once, and she told me it was absolutely terrifying to watch - she thought I was having a seizure, and wanted me to go to the ER. I only convinced her otherwise by reciting everything she’d said while I was on the floor - thus demonstrating, of course, that I hadn’t been unconcious. Frankly, it was harder on her than it was on me - once the pain stopped, it was done, but my sister was genuinely freaked.
I’ll admit, though, that while the pain is there it’s entirely terrifying - because what if it doesn’t stop? It always has before, but still.
So, I’d call this a solid 7, verging on 8 - anything higher, I’d reserve for pain that actually convinced me I was dying, or otherwise losing a limb or major organ.
Oh, and I got kicked in the testicles once. If the ear thing is a 7, a swift kick to the balls would be a six - though that might just mean I need to re-align my scale.
I’ve never been a 10; the highest I’ve personally witnessed was my mother’s reaction to HRT. She was white, then red, then strange colors, then white… kept dry-heaving and was in so much pain she couldn’t even speak. I almost wished she would faint - didn’t quite wish it because I thought that would have been even more serious, but man that looked painful.
To make things even more fun, this took place during the time she was bedridden due to a combo of depression and a pinched disk, and misdiagnosed (so getting the wrong meds, which led to yet more medical problem). Man that was one seriously hellish year She’s also had trigeminal pain and sciatica, neither one was as bad: with sciatica she can reason, with trigeminal pain she can cuss.
I hit a 7 or 8 during my C-section. The epidural wore off or just plain couldn’t touch the visceral pain of them putting my uterus back together. I have blocked out most of it, but I remember screaming and attempting to curl into a ball on the operating table, but my feet and hands were tied down so it was mostly just pulling my knees into my body.
That’s the most pain I’ve ever experienced.
The next most painful was probably breaking my wrist when I was 7, which I’d rate at a 6 or 7, and also smashing my finger in a door, which was probably a 7. With the finger I literally couldn’t breathe for a minute or two and then all I could do was whimper and kept saying “it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts!!” over and over. That nail fell right off and I burst the skin from the pressure. I still shudder thinking about that.
But being awake and feeling people operating on your insides? Yeah, that’s my top most painful (and nightmare-ish) experience.
Holy cats, Elysium. And it’s only an 8?! You’ve got some crazy high pain threshold. Now I feel foolish for rating my cornea scratch so highly.
Glad you’re better.
Ditto :(.
Only thing I can think of is that the epidural was having some effect, just not enough.
Did the staff at least attempt to help when you started screaming??
Worst I can think of was either getting hit in the balls by a soccer ball or slamming my fingernail in a car door. Both would rank around a 6-7 I guess.
Eye injury as well, but it wasn’t a small cut/abrasion. It was a complete tear of the cornea. I was raking leaves and turned the wrong way under a tree. A dead branch hit me in the eye and completely ripped my cornea. Funny thing was, it didn’t hurt that much when it happened; it just felt like I had something in my eye. But a few hours later, HOLY FUCKING CRAP!! The pain brought me to my knees.
Worst pain I’ve ever had. Worse than tooth pain. I’d give it a 9. You know how people always say something is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick? They’re right. ANYTHING is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick!
Thanks guys. Yeah I think the epidural was doing something, just not enough. Apparently the anesthesiologist was pumping syringes of more drugs into my line the whole time, but it wasn’t doing the job, so once the OB noticed I was trying to escape they paused the operation and sent for a second anesthesia consult, who doped me pretty heavily. I think I got fentanyl and morphine, IIRC. I could barely keep my eyes open after that, but no more pain!
I had the needle under the toenail thing done about 10 years ago when I shattered my big toe. The only solice was in holding another man’s hand and cussing at the top of my lungs.
My “10” would have to be when I was a fireman and was being burned alive (which is better than being burned dead, I suppose). My crewmates, I later learned, had the same thoughts I did: we just wanted to die to get the pain over with.
Tanker driver standing over us to shade us from the sun brought it down to 8 or 9.
Cool water poured on our burns: briefly down to 4 or 5. If we could have been bathing in cold water, easily 2 or 3, but not really an option in the rangeland of SE Idaho.
Snorkeled 100% submersion in saline tanks as part of rehab: a blissful 0. Debridement (using a scrubbie to rip away dead burn tissue) immediately following: 6 or 7.
Getting skin graft stitches removed: about a 2, but from the entire burn/treatment experience, the closest I came to fainting. Go figure. 
I’ve had a few times that qualify as the "greatest pain I can imagine:
An undiagnosed ruptured appendix, filling my body with poison.
A 10-day migraine.
An hour-long spinal tap (the doc couldn’t find an opening, except by trial-and-error).
The worst pain I can recall ever having experienced was broken ankles on two different occasions. Both times I broke the bones in the evening/night, and before getting it set the next day, at some point during the night the throbbing ache got pretty impressive. Not sure where I would put it on a scale of 1-10, tho.
Lacerations have never impressed me as all that painful, either when icurred or afterwards.
I always have a pretty tough time getting my mind around that pain scale, tho. In general, I have a really really high pain threshhold. What concerns me most is anticipating pain, and not knowing how bad it is going to get. So the worst imaginable for me would be something crazy like slowly having my skin peeled off.
Actually, in my job I hear someone do this 1-10 pain thing just about every day. It always cracks me up when someone says, “I am not exaggerating, but 11!” Yeah - the Spinal Tap pain scale! Depending on how much of a dick I am feeling on any given day, I point out that - in fact - by definition they ARE exaggerating, causing me to question the credibility of EVERYTHING they say…