I used to work with a guy who lost half his thumb that way. He was working on a fixed gear bike though. He returned to work after 4 days- i think I would have stayed home for a month or two.
Unmedicated birth with my second child (that wasn’t the worst pain), who was stuck (not the worst, either). After laboring for several hours, they raced me to the OR to do an emergency c-section, but he managed to be born first, which resulted in a pretty bad perineum tear (not the worst…hardly even felt it). At that point, they gave me an epidural so they could stitch me up, which took several hours…many, many stitches. After I was home from the hospital for a few days, the stitches became infected. I went to my GP and she pulled about 40 of the stitches out of very sensitive, infected skin. That was the worst pain. I laid there and cried the whole time she was doing it, and I am not generally a crier.
Other than some painful leg cramps and a few broken bones, I’d have to say the neurologist’s electrical test for carpal tunnel. It was hurting my brain even at the lowest level, and fried my brain as he turned the dial up. He said to continue breathing to prevent that, but I was unable to inhale/exhale during the test. I have a low stress tolerance since then.
I think I had cluster headaches as a side effect of flourquinolone antibiotics that were prescribed to treat pneumonia. I was taking 24-30 Advil and 12+ Tylenol a day trying to control the headaches but I still could not sleep for more that 20 minutes at a time and spent the whole 3 days writhing in agony while being almost septic on top of it. Three days into the course I finally called my doctor and told him I was going to stop taking them. I think if it went on for a couple more days I would have offed myself.
The headaches continued on and off in a much more mild, but still debilitating degree for about 2 years after the pneumonia. I don’t know if it was the flourquinoline, but I thought it was and it seemed to correlate.
You know, if you just up and tear it completely, it’s not that painful.
I tore my right patellar tendon completely on 1/4, had it repaired 1/5, and was cleared to walk without a brace on 3/28. Still in PT, but have 120 degrees ROM & can go up and down stairs without pain. I gather that partial tears are harder to diagnose and harder to treat.
Probably the most painful thing I ever did was tear my MCL on my left knee and strain my ACL (already partially torn) in my jr. year of high school. Made it off the field, and about 3 minutes later, apparently all color drained from my face as the pain hit me. All I remember was that it HURT. Luckily, it calmed down after 15 minutes and wasn’t really very bad until after the MCL reconstruction/ACL diagnostic arthroscopy. Then it throbbed and hurt for about 3 days even with the pain pills. The torn patellar tendon was a cakewalk compared to that.
I may mentioned this before, but I broke my back in a fall from a ladder.
When I hit, I landed on the concrete edging around my planting area in my front yard.
It crushed one of my thoracic vertebrae into four pieces.
Remarkably, when you break your back, no visual popups occur in your sensorium that say: “Excuse me, sir, but you appear to have broken your back. I strongly recommend that you remain still in order to avoid permanent spinal damage.” (All in Jarvis’ voice, of course.)
I rolled on my side and was greeted with an amazing amount of pain. I said out loud, “Oh, this isn’t good.” I walked partially upright to the front steps, up them, and then weakly called to my wife. Eventually, we went to the ER which was about 2 blocks away. I walked in and during triage the nurse was stunned that I was ambulatory. I suppose I must have a high threshold of pain.
I was really irritated when they told me I couldn’t go home because I had an assignment for the next day. I didn’t really grok how serious my injury was. But, the pain informed me that I needed to take it seriously. Now, years later, I still have chronic pain from it. But, I am alive and pain is just a mental thing. I take a naproxen occasionally, but mostly I have gotten used to it.
I wish we had warning lights in our minds when we do something really injurious to ourselves. I suppose that is what pain is supposed to do. heh heh heh
Another one: I was planning to go swimming. I was changing, got naked and dropped my glasses. Went down to grab them and managed to hit the corner of a wooden box with my tailbone. I saw stars. Swearing in agony I got up, and on my way there I hit my head on my dresser. Had to go to the hospital after that. Cracked tailbone. It still hurts if I sit on a hard surface.
Wow. I guess I’ve been lucky.
There’s pain and then there’s agony. The agony is the pain that won’t stop and is in the worst kind of place (I really feel for the guy with the eye pain above!)
So, I remember the first, and last, time I rode a horse bareback. I was down the road trying to cozy up to the cute girl who owned the horse; she suggested I ride bareback but didn’t give me any particular instructions. It worked fine until the horse stopped, and I rolled forward. Ow. I was in such pain that I curled up in the fetal position and allowed myself to fall off the horse. She thought it was pretty funny. Fortunately, I felt reasonably OK in fairly short order. Pain, not agony.
The first time I lived alone I managed to food-poison myself. That was a nasty weekend. When I finally felt well enough to get up I went to a doctor, but by that time all the fun was over. The intestinal pain was intense. That was long ago, but I do remember that at the time it was the worst pain I’d felt. It might still be the worst, but it’s hard to compare pain that’s 20 years apart.
The 2nd degree sunburn and sun poisoning was no picnic, but wasn’t as bad as the food poisoning.
When I got my first root canal the dentist (a student at UM dental school) was a bit too cautious. He asked when stuff hurt, and I told him, and he’d do stuff to make the pain go away, all good. But he got to a point where nothing he did avoided the pain, and he tried all sorts of stuff to fix it. I finally said the hell with it, just drill! He did, and there was about 1/4 second of complete blinding pain, but it was over so fast I wondered why we went to all the trouble to prevent it. The real problem was that one of the tricks he used caused serious severe pain in my gums that was agony for the next two or three days. Not nearly as painful, but far worse to bear because of the unending constant nature of the pain. Dental pain really can be awful that way! I didn’t realize the cause was the technique until another dentist did the same thing years later, and boy did I remember. I will never permit that technique again!
I’ve had rotator cuff tears the last couple years, and while all in all they’re not all that terrible, they are capable of momentary stabs of incredibly sharp pain, which quickly reminds one not to move one’s arm in that position again soon.
And I had a 1cm diameter kidney stone. Extracorporeal shockwave lithotripsy turned it into gravel, with all the stones at most 2mm diameter, which is pretty small potatoes, so not the worst that passing stones has to offer, but man was it a drag to have the pain come in 6-hour bouts, for the next week or so. The worst bit is that only near the end did I happen to find the best relief. My wife suggested a hot bath to relax and I tried it, and as my body slipped into the super hot water, the pain went away like magic! Too bad I couldn’t stand the heat for more than say 30 minutes at a time, but it was really nice to know that whenever I couldn’t stand it any more, I could have a half hour vacation from the pain.
Still, all in all, I don’t think I’ve been much past 7 on the pain scale, except for very brief moments. I’m confident that the worst I’ve been through is a walk in the park compared to giving birth or being engulfed in flames. And the best part of all my pain (except the food poisoning) is that it was never anything dangerous. I was never in fear of life or limb. (Boy was I relieved when I learned that the recurring dull ache in my midriff was just a stone that wouldn’t descend!)
Remind me to keep my distance from you! Yeesh!
Yeah, what is it about a broken pinky toe? Man they hurt, and only when it’s broken do you realize how much of the time other people spend standing on it.
Had my teeth drilled.
Without novacaine.
Four times (one visit at a time),
I did this once. I woke up on the floor. Smashed my lower lip good on the way down, too.
Didn’t brake in time and rode my bicycle into the side of a friend’s house. Bike stopped, I didn’t.
Agreed on the pinky toe. My worst pain would probably be a migraine, or back labour for a 36 hour childbirth, but since it came up, when I was in seventh grade, I broke my pinky toe. I ran into the edge of a table and I knew something wasn’t right because after a flash of pain it went numb.
I peeled my sock off to realize my baby toe, previously totally normal, was now upside down. I ended up having to go to the ER so the Doc could freeze it and flip it back.
Ow.
I watched my son experience episodes of cluster headaches a few years ago.
:eek: :eek: :eek:
I watched my Mother slowly die of cancer.
Tonsillectomy, hands down, as an adult. Do you know how many nerve endings there are at the back of your throat?
And I have had a baby after 27 hours of labor, three hours of pushing, that ended up being an emergency c-section, broken a couple of bones that didn’t get set, and one required surgery 20 years later; I got shin splints so bad while running military PT that my legs finally went numb, and I fell over, had all four wisdom teeth out at once, and get migraine headaches that were so bad when I was a teenager, all I could do was lie in bed in a dark, silent room.
Tonsillectomy still wins.
Idiot doctor gave me codeine pills instead of liquid. I crushed then and ate them with babyfood pudding. All else I could eat the first day were Popsicles, and Ensure over ice. By the third day, I could eat stage 1 babyfood fruit (fiber). It was more than a month before I could drink orange juice.
But it fixed what it was supposed to fix, and I’d do it again.
Shingles.
I got shot in the foot. Felt the impact but no pain, then blood started bubbling up out of my boot so I sought medical aid. Never hurt til the next day when my foot and lower leg turned incredible shades of blue and green from the round’s shock, then it hurt for weeks, like the pain from the shin kicking game we used to play as little Texans in our cowboy boots.
Perhaps she was coming on to you? 
Boyo Jim, I recently had a discussion with somebody who had a torsion when he was a boy. His neighbor, a veterinarian, drove the screaming boy and his quite distressed father to the hospital. As the boy was being rushed into the ER, the neighbor pulled the father aside to describe what exactly had happened. During the conversation he mentioned that when it would happen to a horse, his opinion was that the most humane treatment was to just shoot the horse right there on the spot!
Numbes 1-9, in no particular order – Pass nine kidney stones.
Sledge hammer vs index finger. I fainted.