What is the worst pain you have ever felt? I mean physical, because it’s easier to quantify. For me, my worst was an ear infection I had 5 years ago. I was diving in a pool when I think it happened, but I let it go, and refused to go to the hospital until it was absolutely unbearable. Even then, it took a while for the pressure to subside (I would’ve been happy to let someone just jam a shapened stick in there it hurt so much!) 2 hrs. out of the emergency room I was playing a gig with a blues band… ouch! Thank God for Codeine!
I feel lucky that this is my worst. It really wasn’t all that bad, nor did it last too terribly long. What is yours?
Senior year of high school, I had something called psuedo tumor cerebrum. Not a big deal, my body was just producing too much spinal fluid so my brain was being shoved forward to the front of my skull, so that I had horrible headaches and I couldn’t see. (Incidently, I went to the hospital for treatment the day before Halloween. My volunteer club was delivering painted pumpkins to the children’s wards in local hospitals that day, so when I finally went for my appointment, I was still in my princess costume!)
Ok, but that wasn’t the worst. The treatment was a SPINAL TAP. That, my friends, is PAIN. I could feel the giant tip of the needle scraping my spinal cord. I felt it go in too, regardless of the lidocaine (which I was allergic to, so I also got a huge itchy rash). The worst part was, I was in the pediatric ward since I was 17, but I was definitely adult-sized, so after FOUR doctors tried to get the needle in but couldn’t, they finally brought down an adult doctorI couldn’t walk or even sit upright for five days. Then I had to get another one a few months later since my optic nerves were still swollen. It was not as bad as the first, but I still don’t recommend getting two spinal taps in four months. If they ever try to give you one, run screaming in the opposite direction.
Well, childbirth is the obvious answer, and it’s certainly right up there for me.
But the worst pain I can remember was back when I was a kid. The dentist my parents took us to didn’t use any anethetic when he filled my teeth. Looking back on this it seems hard to believe, but I know it happened. I still get tensed up when I have drilling done–even when I’m completely numb.
Did anyone else have this experience as a child–or was my parents’ dentist just a weirdo? (BTW, this was in the 60s when I was about 7 or 8.)
I hear ya! (no pun intended)
I’m just now getting over an ear infection, with a bonus fever that’s been denaturing all the proteins in my brain.
The only good thing that came out of this episode is that, unable to work or even watch TV (actually, ‘hear’ TV, as I the sound came across as screechy noises ), I’ve been glued to the Internet and that’s how I discovered the Straight Dope.
But the worst pain I ever experienced, barring birth, was from getting a squirt of varnish stripper in the eye. My screaming made banshees sound like Helen Keller.
For me it was when I had my femur cut to correct it’s length about 10 years ago. Even with Morphine it was excrusiating. My ex-wife had similar surgery 2 years ago when she had her right hip replaced. She went through childbirth 3 times and said the pain after hip replacement surgery was much worse than any she had during child birth. That gave me a smug sense of satisfaction. If a woman in the know, thinks having the femur cut is more painful than childbirth and I have had my femur cut than I can deduce that I have been through pain worse than childbirth.
cher3, not quite the same experience - the dentist in my case did use novocaine, but after three shots of it I still wasn’t numb, and the dentist didn’t believe me and drilled anyway. YOWWWWWWWWWW!
That was about eight years ago, to this day I won’t have my teeth worked on without laughing gas.
Yes! Ear aches are incredibly painful - now I can understand
why babies cry when I had an ear infection two years ago.
So ear aches are probably the worst pain ever felt by man and woman.
BUT childbirth has got to be the worst pain ever period.
The beginning is not so bad; you’re excited and happy that
the nine months have come and gone. Then, heavy labor is about the hardest work I have ever done. You feel as if it will never end [psycho twilight zone], your back and hips remind you of that turkey breastbone that you and your sister fought over after thanksgiving dinner, your insides
feel as if they are on fire [that infamous ring of fire! yikes], you’re tired, sweaty, hair plastered down …
I remember muttering motherf****r when my mom was out of the room. She says I was just yelling - the polite lady she is.
So guys, all those comedy jokes [like pulling your lower lip over your head, shitting basketballs, looking like the young girl in the Exorcist movie] might be true, but you really have no idea what heavy labor is like.
End of my first heavy labor story: I remember threatening to do a c-section myself and then the labor team decided that I was probably right. I had another c-section for twins exactly eleven month later. Which shows you the power
of childbirth amnesia…
The flip side of the question is what is the nicest, heartwarming part? Hearing that first cry… putting them on the breast for the first time… exploring the newborn for the first time with your partner and their dad. This is what makes both Mother’s and Father’s Day something so special.
What do you mean, we have no idea?! I went through it too when I was a baby. Let me tell you, switching from a nice warm swimming pool to a cold harshly lit room with a sadistic, plastic-gloved health care “professional” ready to wallop you to force nasty oxygen in your lungs is no picnic. Then they brutally amputate part of your body (the umbilical cord), throw you in a prison (the crib), and all these weird giant freaks come and make funny faces at you and poke you in the stomach.
Hmmmm.
Twins, no anesthesia (by the time I got to the hospital I was 8 centimeters. The doctor just looked at me and shrugged.)
Sciatica(or however it’s spelled). I once got an attack on the way to the train station from work. A very bad attack. I slowly sank to the sidewalk, waited for a co-worker to wander near me and begged her to call a taxi for me so I could get home. This is on the corner of Pine and Wall, the financial capital of the world.
Cellulitis. In one night my leg went from normal to about 5 times its normal size.
Pneumonia. It wasn’t so much the physical pain as much as the feeling that I was going to die.
I once thought of starting a thread called “Whose in worst shape than me?” but thought it was way to whinney
I do know of a girl who grew up going to a dentist who did not use drugs of any kind. Yoiks! what a drag that must be! What a total sadist!! As one who has 2 crowns and tons of metal in my mouth, I couldn’t even imagine that! I guess dental work ranks up there with some of the worst pain, even with drugs, but it’s so concentrated and it usually ends rather quickly. That’s why I didn’t consider it for this topic.
The most painful experience I could remember was when I was still in primary school, swimming in the swimming pool - and trying to roll myself around and around in the water when suddenly i whammed my head onto the base of the swimming pool – but somehow i still managed to swim back to the surface and continue playing.
Hmmmm. Not childbirth, no. And I know I’m not going to get any sympathy from the dopettes because it’s a common side effect of pregnancy but (pun intended) my greatest pain was in the part of the body known as the “Preparation H” area. But it wasn’t the disease – it was the cure.
It got so bad I went to the doctor who applied a local anesthetic and then a sharp knife. As soon as the anesthetic kicked in I felt so good I could have kissed the guy (which would have been awkward since my job at the time was to hold my cheeks out of the way). But (pun intended) an hour or so later – the anesthetic wore off! And I thought I was hurting before!
As if the physical pain weren’t enough we were flying to Hawaii the next day (Oh boy! Six hours of sitting down!) and when we got there I was bleeding so badly I had to borrow a sanitary napkin from my wife’s aunt. So I got to be traumatized emotionally as well as physically.
I did have a painful ear infection four years ago.
When penicillin failed to clean it up and the
doctors started talking about tubes and draining
it, I poured rubbing alcohol down the ear. I
cannot describe the new dimension it gave to
my understanding of pain.
Two decades ago, I had to have EIGHT impacted
wisdom teeth out (lucky me!.) First two, then two,
then I made them do the other four (all on my
left side) at once. It gave me new meaning into
pain and also being on drugs.
