Never had kidney stones. however I have experienced some pain in my life.
Putting a light fixture in a drop ceiling. Grid work feel apart, and light fixture fell. One index finger cut to the bone, the opposite ring finger and little finger cut not quite as deep. I went to wash the blood off to assess the damage, and the feeling of water in the wound was… interesting. What was worse was when the jackass of a doctor went to sew it up. The pain killer injections hurt worse than anything else up to that point. If I had had a good hand I would have grabbed him by the balls, and told him that if he hurt me, I was going to hurt him.
Another time I was receiving tires at a Montgomery Ward. The tires were stored in a basement below the auto shop. There was an outside door that when opened to small walled in area with a steel clad fire door in the floor. To get the tires in the basement, you opened the outer door, reached down and opened the door in the floor and secured it to the wall behind the door with a bent up coat hanger. Anyway when I was done, I reached across to undo the wire, I thought I had a tangle to undo, when the door just fell. My left foot was hanging over the edge of the opening. The steel clad fire door landed right across my big toe. :eek:
It hurt so bad, I was sure that I had cut the toe off.
But wait it gets worse…
I had to fill out an accident report before they would send me to the doc in the box down the street. :mad:
Then the doctor announces that he is going to drill my toe nail to relieve the pressure (please, oh God, please) He tapes a straightened paper clip to a tongue depressor and heats it over an alcohol flame. When it is red hot, he applies it to the nail. No pain, however when it melts a hole through the red hot paper clip goes down hits the nail bed.:eek: By the way the blood from under my nail hit the ceiling.
However all of this pales when compared to when I broke my heel, and strained all the connective tissue around my metatarsals. I fell off the back of a truck, and when I hit, I heard the most sickening crunch I have ever heard. then my foot planted, and body fell over the top, straining all the metatarsals. When I hit my the ground, in my head, I could hear my football coach saying get up and walk it off. I looked down at my foot (huge waves of pain) and I see my foot turn and point straight down. I tell my ankle to bend upwards. No dice, sideways, no dice. Nothing but pure pain.
Of course the entire office had to come out to see my roll around on the ground. :rolleyes:
Anyway I get the hospital and they decide to do the X-rays before the meds. 1 hour later, still no meds. I am sweating so badly I my shirt is soaked. Mind you this is in a hospital that is kept at 70F. I had to use all of my concentration on pain control to keep from screaming. I had a death grip on the rails of the bed, and I trying every concentration trick I have ever learned to keep the pain at bay.
At one point, a orderly stuck his head in the door and told me my meds were coming. I looked at him and in my lowest most menacing voice said “So if fucking Christmas, my question is which one is going to get here first.” (It was early April)
Anyway at long last (about 70 minutes after arrival) my injection arrived. The relief was instantaneous. It felt like someone had lifted 300 lbs off my body.
Then my doctor would not prescribe anything stronger than Vicoden, and my heel would just laugh at two Vicoden. I spent 2 months sleeping for not more than 20-30 minutes at a time.
Funny, after that, a broken rib doesn’t bother me much.
Multiple occasions: dental work. The novocaine never seems to do the trick, but I can’t seem to convince my dentists that I need something stronger. One big reason I try to avoid the bastards.
When I was five, my brother and were throwing dried grass into the 50-gallon drum that our family burned trash in. (Burning your trash was SOP for small-town homes at the time.)
I wasn’t wearing a shirt and leaned my belly and chest directly onto the barrel. I ran and climbed into our car and jumped up and down on the front seat, banging my head against the roof. After a minute of that I ran into the house, crawled under the covers and screamed.
Eventually I was taken to the doctor and covered with a bandage about the size of a catcher’s chest protector.
As an adult, there was a night of horrible post-dental work pain. To this day I curse the name of “Zomax,” the worthless analgesic that the doc had prescribed for me.
More recently there were a series of 7-9 hour gall stone attacks. I’m guessing that a kidney stone or shingles would have been worse, but it’s a rotten feeling to know you’re going to be in anguish all nite long.
Is it just in one area, or is it ALL dental work? I had one tooth that just would NOT get numb, no matter how much anesthetic the dentists pumped into my jaw. I finally had that sucker pulled. If you won’t get numbed anywhere, look into sedation dentistry. The dentist will put you partly or all the way out, and get a lot of dental work done while you’re in lala land. This technique was created for people like you. It’s more expensive, but at least you’ll get your dental work done.
I have multiple sclerosis. A few years back I was on an injectable medicine called Copaxone. It’s a once a day injection & the stuff is kind of bad for your skin, so your supposed to move it around a lot to avoid “dents”. It’s actually the fat under your skin slowly eaten away.
So anyway, one day I was doing an arm shot and I got a little too far toward the back of my arm. I injected directly into the nerve on the back of your arm (think it’s called the ulnar). It’s the only time in my life I’ve ever actually screamed. After the initial pain, my arm felt like it was on fire for about 3 hours. I kept running cold water on it, but that didn’t help much.
My pinky finger on that hand was numb for about 2 months afterwards.
Heh, most people find the sounding only slightly uncomfortable, or experience no pain at all. I just happen to be one of those lucky ones. Some gynecologists will give you something to help open the cervix in advance, but mine did not. It took him about 3 or 4 tries to actually get mine open
It shouldn’t. An IUD is more effective than the pill, has fewer side effects, and generally results in an increase in libido. I know my fiance and I have certainly enjoyed mine
I’ve heard that people have variable tolerances for pain. My father and I seem to be very lucky in that regard. He drove himself to the hospital with a dislocated shoulder and a finger bent completely backwards due to a fall. I insisted on being discharged 22 hours after a C-Section and never needed a pain killer.
I have had a broken ankle, knees and toe on different occasions, lacerations, third degree burn from a flaming marshmellow that fell on my thigh, numerous UTI, gall bladder attacks and surgery and natural child birth.
And the worst pain that brought tears to my eyes was a barium enema that had to be done after a viral intestinal illness that lasted two weeks. I have never felt such agony when they pumped air into my inflamed intestine and begged for the tech to stop and remove the tube.
I have heard people say it is uncomfortable but I don’t know whether it was the fact that I was in bad shape to start with, dehydrated and weak or whether I am really a wimp in disguise but I would have triplets by natural child birth before I would ever go through that again.
The worst, pain-wise, was my breast reduction. I remember coming out from under the anesthesia in the recovery room and telling the nurse that it oughta be illegal for anything to hurt that much. She gave me a shot of blessed morphine into my IV and I was out again. I was supposed to go home that night, but fortunately there was a miscommunication between my surgeon and the hospital and I ended up staying all night. It was nice because I woke up in a lot of pain during the night, and the nurse just happened to be in checking on me. So I got another dose of some strong medication that knocked me right back out. It was two months before I could move without pain. Don’t get me wrong–I’m glad I did it, and wished I had done it years before, but it was some more kind of pain.
A close second was when I threw my back out. I was on my way to college; IIRC, I had an exam that day. When I stood up and put on my backpack, I felt this pain gripping me around my waist. I stood still, it passed, and I went on to the car. When I sat down in the car, the pain started up again and I thought I was going to die it hurt so badly. I managed to get back into my apartment, grabbed the phone to call a friend to take me to the E/R, and collapsed onto the floor where I remained until she got to my place. I spent a week or so flat on my back with lots of strong painkillers. Every now and then I’ll get an almost identical spasm, and it freaks me out, but they seem to be a lot more isolated now.
I expect that it was the internal bleeding that caused the shoulder pain–it can irritate the diaphragm which is often felt in the shoulder. When I had a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, this happened to me as well, and I can sympathize! When I was on the operating table being prepped, I took a deep breath to relax and the shoulder pain was so intense that it literally took my breath away. It was several seconds before I could breathe again, and it felt more like a year!!
This entire episode–from conception to rupture to surgery and throughout recovery–was the worst pain I’ve ever gone through. First runner up–a severe gall bladder attack, so bad it felt like my ribs were breaking!
I don’t talk about it too often but I had a penile implant (the pump) installed and that required slicing open not only my penis but my scrotum. Of course I was under anesthetic during the slicing but the recovery was unbelievable. If you are a male, imagine your testicles swollen to the size of tennis balls and your penis swollen proportionately. I spent a week or so holding packages of frozen corn and/or peas against myself. I thought I would pass out when the catheter was removed and it was a month before I could walk semi-comfortably. And the coloring of the bruises was spectacular.
I’ve had migraines that caused me to vomit from the pain and I swear I’d rather have a dozen of them back-to-back than another penile surgery.
It’s strange the way people have different responses to different types of pain. I had an all-natural labor and delivery with my second child - induced labor and forceps delivery - and yeah, it hurt, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as the pain when I threw my back out. That was just relentless.
The worst, though, was waking up after abdominal surgery and being told I couldn’t have any pain medication because my blood pressure was too low. I was in absolute agony; all I could do was lie there and listen to myself moan.
Actually, this was what the abdominal surgery I had was for. I never ruptured, but they had to cut me open and cut my fallopian tube. Maybe that’s what makes it so painful. I was clutching a pillow to my belly for weeks.
I have had five abdominal surgeries (the ectopic, my gall bladder removed, and three C-sections), but the ectopic was by far the worst to recover from. They tried to go laparoscopic, but there was too much blood in my abdomen and it was pooling under my liver, so they had to open me up with a VERTICAL incision. I had 28 staples running from my navel to my pubic bone. Plus, I had a bellyful of CO[sub]2[/sub] to get rid of. Also, because of post-surgical bleeding, I had extensive lower abdominal bruising. All in all, I’d rather have my gall bladder put back in and re-removed than go through all that again!!
My liver gets inflamed from time to time (no, it’s not alcohol related, I don’t really drink). It is excruciating and lasts 4 or 5 hours.
I eventually got a prescription to demerol (injectable) and have that around the house. Ironically, since I’ve had that laying around the pain hasn’t come back - I think it’s afraid.
Complications resulting from childbirth, including an intense seizure, 2-week-long migraine and an excruciatingly sore body because they refused to let me walk around for five days after thanks to a catheter - I think I would have recovered faster if I could have moved
Childbirth (I was in labor for 28 hours before my MD told me I needed an epidural or might have complications; turned out I had them anyway)
I’m only 32, but somehow I developed the shingles in February. That pain made childbirth and my subsequent complications look like a lot of pressure, but I think that could be selective amnesia. Still, it didnt’ help that pain medication doesn’t work on me - I tend to wake up even under general anasthesia, so even though I had pain meds, they only worked for about 30-60 minutes, but you’re only supposed to take them every 4 hours, max.
Yep, happened to me, too. Hauled out of my workplace on the first day of a new job on a stretcher. People talked about that for a LONG time. (I, on the other hand, spent 4 days in the cardiac unit because they thought I had a heart attack.
I went through the chiseling process to remove the impacted wisdom teeth awake after I stopped breathing while under sedation. Novocain worked OK, though. I made a huge mistake of allowing the codeine wear off afterwards. I can understand how teeth are a target for torturers now.
Yeah - been there, too. Luckily it worked for the wisdom teeth, but I have spent some white-knuckle time in the dentist chair because of Novocaine failures.
Man, are we on a dental roll here or what? Why is it that teeth split when biting down on things that should not cause problems. For me, it was a cream pie at Christmas!
I would also add that having someone slam their hand into yours to give you a manly, business handshake after you fractured your wrist can give you a pain sensation that will take you to your knees. :eek:
