Years ago I had my wisdom teeth removed and I ended up throwing the pain medication that they prescribed down the drain. Never needed it. Pain rating of 1.
I had half my thyroid removed a year or so ago. After the surgery I gave a pain reading of 2. The nurse kept trying to convince me that my pain was more intense. I told her that, honestly, the only thing that hurt was the back of my throat and uvula (because it was one big blister where they shoved the breathing tube down my throat). She kept trying to give me Tylenol with codeine and I asked for just plain Tylenol. She called the doctor to get his approval because she just wouldn’t accept that I could get by with OTC Tylenol.
I’m not a glutton for punishment, I just have a high tolerance for it.
I had a kidney stone incident while I was uninsured and looked like the rocker I was. The doctor didn’t want to give me any pain meds because he thought I was faking it and just looking for a fix. On a scale of 1 to 10, I give it a AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!
A “painkiller” injected directly into my fingertip.
Attempting to rollover in bed after having had hernia surgery. I swear to Og that it felt like someone was trying to pull my scrotum off.
Being on the receiving end of an overly aggressive high 5 when my shoulder was in the process of freezing itself. It sent me to my knees for about a minute.
This. I ha six children with no pain relief (blame super fast labors)…I’d give birth to all six with no pain relief before I’d ever want to pass a stone.
I’ve passed three and had one 1cm stone get stuck and make my kidney swell. That was a mere 48 hours after birthing baby #6 in the car. I had after pains of the birth combined with the knife-stabbing pain in my kidney radiating down the left ureter…I honestly wanted someone to just shoot me. Had a ureteroscopy three days post partum.
I have an extremely high tolerance for pain. I said 9 for pain, 15 for absolute misery.
I have the mental torture of knowing I have six or seven stones still in my kidneys. That was after they zapped two more large ones with lithotripsy three months later.
If I can make it to the Dr. I never rate more than an 8, a 10 means I lay there until someone puts me in the ambulance and takes me away, this has happened twice. I rate all other pains based on those two since I can’t imagine anything worse.
Oh, a Kidney stone and being pitched 115’ from a moving car and landing on the pavement.
I probably hear an answer of 9 or 10 at least once a week. And there are some people who answer 10 no matter what you give them or how often. Usually the words “metastasized cancer” are involved.
I hate the pain scale. HATE it. It tells me very little about a person’s pain, but it does help me place patients into little stereotyped categories. The patient who’s clearly giving a number lower than their pain level - they’re ‘lying downward’ in an attempt to be tough or not bother me. The “Oh, my hangnail is a ten!” people ‘lie upward’ in an attempt to get attention, extra pain meds, or just to be melodramatic. I tend to ignore the first group and resent the second.
The thing is, I KNOW I shouldn’t think this way. One of the biggest surprise challenges of my job has involved patient pain/discomfort. It’s a weird balancing act. As a nurse, you can’t curl up into a ball of whimpering sympathy because your patient’s uncomfortable, because they all are, and you’d never get anything done. And sometimes you have to cause the pain. If you don’t get used to other people’s pain, you could never give injections, put in IVs, or place catheters. But it’s easy to go too far the other way and become callous. For some reason, the pain scale tends to send me into callous mode. I ask instead, “Is your pain a little, medium, or really bad?” and I’m fine. Go figure.
I think its called a charley horse. Its a muscle cramp that I’d occasionally (only like 2 or 3 times a year, if that much) get at night. The last time I got it was about 8 months ago. I woke up in the middle of the night and had this weird sensation on my right calf. I knew what it was, and had to brace myself. It was like somebody ripping out the muscles in my leg. I couldn’t even move, I was in that much pain. I gripped my leg like a vice and just waited. The thing literally lasted almost 30 minutes. I was in tears for part of it. I couldn’t move or straighten my leg at all, I was just paralyzed by the pain
Afterwards, there was still some dull pain in my calf. I think I walked with a limp for an entire day afterwards. I heard you get that from a potassium deficiency. You can bet that after that, I bought a whole bushel of bananas and ate them
Recent hospitalization for extreme high blood pressure. Worst pain ever.
When they asked me 1-10? I said 12. Between vomiting and not being able to sit upright. It was wicked.
I have had migraines, sinus headaches, labour and C section, and ineffective dental anesthesia, all pretty freaking intense. But all paled in comparison to BP in the 200/150+ range. Wicked. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
That’s the worst pain I’ve ever experienced, too. If I were at a medical facility, I’d rate it a 10.
But the worst total pain from one incident was when I had an infected tooth. Almost as bad as a charley horse and it didn’t go away. I rated it an 8 when asked with the caveat that “that’s not counting sharp immediate pain. I’m in the worst long term pain I’ve ever experienced.”
I hate the pain scale. HATE it. It tells me very little about a person’s pain, but it does help me place patients into little stereotyped categories. The patient who’s clearly giving a number lower than their pain level - they’re ‘lying downward’ in an attempt to be tough or not bother me. The “Oh, my hangnail is a ten!” people ‘lie upward’ in an attempt to get attention, extra pain meds, or just to be melodramatic. I tend to ignore the first group and resent the second.
.[/QUOT
I think it is most valuable as a way to document improvement in perceived pain. “If your pain was a 10 when you first came in what is it now?”
Advice to the people who responded 11 or 12 don’t tell that to your healthcare providers. The scale goes from 0-10 there is nothing higher than a 10. I must hear this a couple times a week and it instantly makes me frustrated with the patient. You may be trying to emphasize how much pain you are in but you immediately discredit yourself. Plus we have to document these numbers and they can only be between 0-10.
A couple other things
If you are sitting in front of me and I ask you your pain and you say 10 out of 10. Then nothing I do during my evaluation should increase your pain because you already have the most pain imaginable
2)Don’t tell me you have a high tolerance for pain and that your pain is a 9 or a 10 because you are just contradicting yourself. There are people out there that have a high tolerance for pain but not nearly as many as those that think they do.
The pain scale is as frustrating (if not more) for providers as it is for patients. It’s difficult to objectify subjective findings but it does have some value particularly when it is used to compare pain over a period of time.
Oh god. I cracked a tooth once and before I could get to a dentist, it had gotten infected. That was probably a 9+. It was the only time in my life I’ve ever thought that just slamming my head on the floor until I passed out was not really all that bad an idea. If the building had caught on fire, I might have noticed. Eventually. The dentist gave me a large number of Vicodin and then when I called to sob that they weren’t doing anything, he gave me a large number of Percocet. Percocet didn’t do anything either, but by that time I wasn’t capable of calling to complain again, much less walking down there to pick up the Rx.
I don’t personally remember, but I’ve been told that when I broke my arm as a child – greenstick fracture of the forearm, I tripped and fell smack on it – the ER people gave me as much Demerol as they safely could before trying to straighten and set it. It hurt so much I couldn’t tell them how much it hurt. I made absolutely no sound at all, and apparently got so still and white the nurse thought I was going into shock.
Yeah, opioid painkillers don’t seem to work right on me. Mercifully, NSAIDs and topical -caines are fine.
I tend not to go to doctors until I’m in such a state that they don’t have to ask me to rate my pain on a scale. Although sometimes they do ask me how I managed to get down there under my own power.
Well in that case I guess I’ve reached a level 10 pain threshhold once in my life. Usually I do decently with pain, but this one time…
now you’re probably going to laugh at me when you hear what it was. It was leg cramps. Phenomenally painful leg cramps. I don’t know what caused them. But I will never forget them. They went on for a good 15 minutes or more, and by minute 2 or 3 I was begging to die. I know that it doesn’t sound possible for leg cramps to be that bad, or that they could be as bad as passing a kidney stone, or a scratched cornea, but going from all of your descriptions, it really was that bad.
I was reduced to a trembling, crying, shouting mess in my room. I was alone. I was confused. It was unexpected. No one was there to help me. I couldn’t walk or move because my legs were in so much pain and the muscles just wouldn’t respond. Even though it only lasted a few minutes it felt like an etertinity at the time. I was cursing God, begging to die, hoping to pass out, etc.
After the cramps subsided, my legs were so sore I could barely walk for the rest of the day. I was literally afraid to walk for a while, and was super paranoid about my legs cramping up in the future like that again.
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The only other pain I would say might reach a 10 was a nightmare I once had. I’ll never forget it. The dream was incredibly vivid, and the pain was unimaginable. Basically, it involved me getting blown up in an atomic bomb explosion. The pain my brain made up for that dream was ethereal and indescribable. It was like a dry burning feeling that enveloped me, inside and out. Everything just burned and felt incredibly dry. The words I’m writing don’t really aptly describe it. When I woke up I was confused, if not relieved, but I was traumatized to the point of not wanting to sleep again for quite a while. Weird stuff, eh?
ETA: Yogsosoth did a great job describing the pain from my legs. Mine too happened when I was sleeping. It was a regular thing for me for all of my teenage years, and early 20’s. Nothing as bad as the “level 10” time though. THAT was the worst.
Anyway, my worst pain was having all my nose hairs ripped out simultaneously. Worse than my broken wrist. Worse than being hit by a car in the crosswalk. Worse than having my toenail ripped out with a scalpel. That was my “10”.
