Unique/memorable experiences you never want to experience again...

For me, it was being bitten by a Yellow Garden Spider when I was a teen…

I was tromping through the field, no reason, just out for a walk, when I accidentally stumbled through a low-lying web, getting the spider on my lower arm, she bit me in self defense, poor thing was probably terrified…

here’s what the experience felt like…
the bite produced an initial pain like an electric shock, immediately after, I could feel the muscles in my lower arm and hand spasming for the next few hours, as muscles were involuntarily contracting and releasing, it was the first, and so far, last time I had experienced the direct effects of a neurotoxin, the spasming lasted for about 4 hours, subsiding into a dull ache the next day

Another one which I will never experience again, thank Og, was my bout of Appendicitis, culminating in an Appendectomy

Two week previous, I thought I had been suffering from severe food poisoning/stomach flu, but it turns out that was the opening stages of Appendicitis, now that my appendix has gone bye-bye, I never have to deal with that kind of pain again

Two weeks ago.

Sunburned eyeballs . Sun Burned Eye Balls.

Rub sand in your eyes. Lots of it. Then add hot sauce. Its so painful you want to cry in pain. Except your frikkin eyes are already full of tears. Ugghhhh, worst pain I’ve ever had.

Breaking up with my first gf/crush/ “so called girl of my dreams”, man- that one sucked.

Also- Applying to medical school. Getting in is a great feeling. Not getting in really sucks. Alot. I wouldn’t wanna do it again just because it’s a stressful year of hell leading up to a small moment of yay! “now what have I done?? O_O”

Treading on a wasp in bare feet. (Ow!)

Having a bowel spasm. (The worst pain of my life.)

Cliff diving.

Well, jumping off of a high ledge at a theme park. Probably about 40 feet. But it was a “cliff” to me.

Glad I did it - twice actually. But I never want to fall that far again.

Chartered sailboat sunk by a hurricane. Interesting, but once is enough.

Having the world outside my cockpit window fading into a gray, featureless murk requiring me to make an emergency landing in a rough farmfield that, by the book, was technically too short for me to land in (the hay stubble was long enough to slow me down faster than usual, so I was able to stop before I hit the land owner’s garage).

Frostbite. I had a “mild” case. Do. Not. Want. To. Feel. That. Again. Exactly the same pain as slamming a bodypart down on a red-hot stove and holding it there. It’s enough to make a grown man cry piteously and I was just a little girl at the time.

Norovirus. Being unable to keep even water down for a week, unable to eat for a week longer, losing 25 pounds in one month, having to eat mush for six months, having to regain the muscle tissue lost to starvation - nope, don’t wanna have to do THAT one again.

Being told a family member committed suicide. That sucked.

I do wish to note that, despite the above, I have also had many wonderful, happy experiences in life I’d be overjoyed to experience again…

Breaking my left leg while playing kickball as a child. The sound…AAAGGGHH!!

Dysentery. Worst intestinal cramps I’ve ever had. Getting up every 15 minutes at night to do tiny bloody shits was fun too, as was the 40-degree fever. The only upshot now is I get to tell people I had dysentery, which is apparently an inherently hilarious disease.

Splitting my head wide open and seeing my own skull* was quite memorable as was the sixty stitches to put my forehead back together but once was more than enough, thanks.

*The ER doctor helpfully pointed out to my upset mother that you could obviously see that I didn’t have a fracture or anything. She was not amused.

Childbirth. Once was quite enough, thank you. I had my daughter in an Air Force teaching hospital, and so I had a group of wannabe docs looking up into what I had always thought of as my private regions. I learned then that I could not, in fact, literally die of embarrassment, no matter how much I wanted to. I also had a couple of wannabe nurses who made some mistakes. Since the pregnancy was an oopsie anyway (foam AND condoms together), this just reinforced my notion that I didn’t want any (more) kids.

I’ve had several bouts with cellulitis. I really think that once was more than enough, thank you VERY much. My doctor finally gave me a prescription for an antibiotic, to be taken at the first sign of the infection.

Very true. When I was nine or so, I had the mother of all sinus infections, which crept over to my eye sockets in a case of periorbital cellulitis (way too close to the brain for comfort!) and gave me two enormous purple goose eggs for eyes. I’m sure I looked like a victim of child abuse or someone who had lost several fights simultaneously–it must have been terribly awkward for my mom to sit around with me and my two black eyes–but I was in too much pain to care.

Fortunately, the rest of my life has been pretty uneventful as far as unpleasantness goes.

Two things spring to mind:

  1. Striking a bicyclist with my car.

It was dark, he was wearing black and had no light. I was turning left; bicyclist was in the right lane approaching. I wouldn’t even have noticed him but that my girlfriend at the time screamed. Dude splayed across my windshield. He hit the ground and stayed there until after paramedics attended to him for about twenty minutes. Amazingly, he wasn’t badly hurt. It was in the city, on campus so there were like ten observers, all of whom dialed 911 on their cells within seconds.

I was trying to help the guy up, shaking like a fool, apologizing like a madman. One of the witness bystanders (perhaps a law student?) pulled me aside and told me I should be careful what I said. The cops were there in under two minutes. Ambulance shortly thereafter. First aid was administered. Amazingly - despite me being a 17-year-old kid, the cops took my side. Told the rider he needed to get a light on his bike, “or else.”

We exchanged info, I apologized profusely again. The bicyclist was pretty cool about the whole thing, despite some nasty bruises. I never heard another word about the incident.

Then I went to my girlfriend’s dorm room and just sat on the bed and shook for like an hour. Hurting myself, well I can deal with that. Nearly killing somebody else - that’s entirely beyond anything I ever want to experience again. To this day, ten years later, I still am overcautious about checking all possible accident routes when I drive. I suppose that’s a good thing.

  1. Smashing my face

I was probably only four years old. This might be my first vivid memory. I was at my grandparent’s house. I was being overactive, like four-year-olds tend to be. My grandmother had a step-stool for the kitchen. For reasons known only to four-year-olds, I decided that an excellent game would be this: climb up to the top step on the stool, then jump off. Grandma scolded me at least once - “Stop that, you’ll fall and hurt yourself”

I don’t know why, but I remember climbing onto the top step and looking through the window into the microwave. Grandma was defrosting some ground beef. For whatever reason I still have a vivid memory of that pound of ground beef turning in the microwave. Anyways, I jumped. But this time I misjudged. I overshot by a few feet. I caught the top of my open mouth directly on a chair, smashing my front teeth. I distinctly remember the force and the shock, though not the pain.

My next memory is sitting on Grandpa’s lap, sobbing and shrieking. He was patting my head and telling me it would be all right. This is memorable because he is a famously unemotional man - even at that young age, I remember understanding that if he was trying to comfort me it must be bad, because anything up to a broken bone was typically met with “walk it off.”

My next memory is being in the emergency room. My parents were holding me down while a surgeon did…I don’t know. This is one of my worst memories. I remember screaming a lot. Also the sheer horror at being restrained while somebody did painful things to me (granted, it was necessary.) That was just triage. I remember being at the dentist the next day. Again, my parents held me down while the dentist poked, pulled and prodded. I still have a distinct memory of hands covering my face to hold me down while the dentist removed shattered teeth. shudder

Unlike most pre-schoolers, I had dentures until my adult teeth came in. :smiley:

Interesting fact - I jokingly mentioned this incident to my Grandmother, twenty years after the fact. Now, my Grandma is a tough lady. Lots of kids, a couple of wars, general “Texas” attitude (where she grew up). On my mentioning, she began weeping. Never mind that I’m grown up and have forgotten the pain (though not the horror of the treatment, as a child). Never mind that I have no trace of the trauma but two bent teeth where the adult teeth were affected by the blow.

“You just kept cying, ‘I just want my teeth back’”.

Bad experience for me, terrible experience for her. I dread an experience like this if I ever have kids of my own.

Owowowowwow! That hurt just to READ about. Sinus infections are painfully bad in themselves. I cannot imagine getting cellulitis of the eye sockets. I think that you have used up your lifetime allotment of pain and suffering with that little episode.

And again, owowowowow!

How the hell did you manage to sunburn your eyes? You’re not supposed to look at the eclipse directly, you know.

Last week, I rode the back of a small truck (it had seats for 14 people) through dusty, bumpy gosh darn hot and humid roads in southern Laos, me and 35 of my new closest friends. Pinned down almost unable to move at all for 3 and a half hours.
The previous day I rode a tuk-tuk with other 12 passengers and the driver…
It was a wonderful experience and all, but I’d rather gnaw my own leg off and bludgeon myself to death with it before doing it again.

Sneaking into the abandoned, decaying morgue of a hospital when I was in high school. There weren’t too many body parts around, but whatever remained was way past it’s best use date.

Running a sound system hire business has put me in a few interesting situations.

Had a gun pointed at me during a robbery at a night club. I had time to wonder if our bass bins were tough enough to stop a bullet. It was in the news the next day, apparently the robbers got away in a police car.

Spending an evening in the not entirely pleasant company of dozens of Nazis, skinheads mostly, celebratiing Hitler’s birthday no less. Brown shirts, arm bands, giant swastika flag on the wall. Not a good vibe. Luckily the skinheads stuck to fighting between themselves.

Lost, driving an unsuitable car around strange woods in the middle of the night. We’d been given a brick of dope as a deposit on a set of projectors being used for a middle-of-the-spooky-wood rave. So far so good, now the exhaust falls off the car. We found our way out eventually. Do you know how much noise a car makes with no silencers? It’s a lot.

On a cross country motorbike trip, seeking shelter in a taco bell in Wva from a tropical storm that was racing across Appalachia. We were hundreds of miles from home on our way to Florida, on two sportbikes trying to navigate a mountain highway with wind shears, driving rain, flood advisories and road construction to boot. Soaked, cold, saddled with doubts uncertainty and fear we soldiered on. Twas the return trip, where we met the same conditions and I nearly cracked after hunkering down under a bridge, seriously considered renting a uhaul to get home. Managed to get back on the bikes, OHio dealt us with some serious SW winds that has us leaning into the wind for hundreds of miles, dear God I wanted off that bike

I’d do it again, but would weather any bad storms in a hotel no matter how long it blew!

Planning a big, fancy, all the bells and whistles wedding. Lordy what a nightmare.

When I married my second husband, we went to the courthouse to make it legal, then later threw a celebration party for our friends and family. Fun, casual, no muss, no fuss.

Beautiful, warm, sunny with nary a cloud in the sky, no wind day. Snow everywhere. At about 9000 feet in the Utah desert mountains. No snow googles.:smack: