It’s a dead tie between kidney stones and gall stones. I honestly don’t know which one hurt worse.
I’ve been lucky so far compared to some of you - touch wood - but I used to have very bad earaches as a child and occasionally as an adult. One infection ruptured my eardrum, but even the ones that didn’t could really hurt.
I can’t really gauge which one of these is most severe, so here goes.
I used to have pretty bad migraines as a teen and young adult.
Had more than one impacted wisdom tooth. Then dry socket. 
Plantar wart on one of my feet. Damn, I could barely walk. The podiatrist gave me advice, padding for the wart, and didn’t even bill me for the visit!
My umbilical hernia repair recovery was not fun… The hernia itself had not been painful, only felt uncomfortable and weird when they poked it.
Left hand lacerated and severely swollen after a car accident (I must have put my hand through the driver’s side window). Shortly after the accident I kept shaking and whimpering over and over, “I need my hand. I do needlework.” Once I got some ice on the hand and calmed down, things were a lot better.
Tooth cracked after root canal months earlier. I had to go in on a Saturday morning for extraction. The night before was not pleasant.
Severe pain carrying the groceries up the stairs. This was before I knew just how bad my back was. Burning pain in my back, tearing pain in my stomach, just awful. I cried out at every step. Scared the crap out of my mom.
Serious dental pain after neglecting my teeth. I went to the ER and they gave me a shot. The doctor just kept digging around in there to find the nerve - I actually screamed.
Panic attack, a couple of times.
An abscessed tooth is by far the most painful thing I have ever experienced. I’ve been through some painful things too… I’ve crashed my longboard going 20+ mph on pavement with no pads. Multiple times… I’ve had the underside of my forearm slashed down to the bone… And much more. An infected tooth is still hands down the most excruciating.
I accidentally ran my index and middle fingers through a idling alternator belt pulley. It was late at night and my hands were grease covered and bloody. Had to use gasoline to clean hands, superglue to keep fingertips together. I was at work the next day. Ouch!
Ah, so many choices.
Self-inflicted, probably the worst (and definitely dumbest) was the time a friend and I were playing catch with a bowling ball and my left middle finger got mashed between ball and floor. Runner-up is any of the many times I’ve either banged a foot into the side of the bathtub while stepping out of it, or bashed a knee into the corner of a desk. At least there the pain fades away pretty quick.
Overall worst was definitely kidney stones, although I was recently unpleasantly surprised to find that constipation can have its moments as well. That particular case of internal blockage, ironically, was brought on by painkillers I’d been taking for the kidney stones.
I had a friend whose 14-year-old son had this, and lost one testicle. After some soul-searching, she got him an implant, because of his age. He would be taking freshman PE the next year. She said if he would older she might tell him to suck it up, but puberty is hard enough. The dilemma had to do with insurance not paying for it because it was “cosmetic.”
I believe you-- it probably is for the same reason the tonsillectomy, which is a very minor surgery as such things go: lots and lots of nerve endings in the mouth and throat.
Physical or mental?
Mental: posting on the SDMB.
Physical: Falling off a three foot stool into an arcadia door and breaking my nose and wrîst.
So funny because it’s so true!
“You should die end table from hell… if I could kill you!” :mad:
–It’s sad that my husband & I do this every other year or so.
Other pains:
I nicked a vein/artery in my ankle as a kid & at the ER, they jabbed the site with needles & filled the area with a “numbing agent” that only made the stitches worse.
Frequent 3 day+ migraines.
Menstrual cramps from hell that nearly put me in the ER several times over the years.
Toothaches requiring extractions, but fortunately nothing impacted or abscessed or even dry sockets.
I do have chronic back & hip pain that’s just background noise for the most part - started at 18 when something in my lower back “slipped” & it hasn’t been right ever since.
Three times I’ve experienced the kind of agony where you wholeheartedly appeal to whatever higher power there is to take your life right then and there to spare you any more suffering.
At separate times in my life (thank Og) I’ve undergone a D&C, an eye surgery, and an infected tooth root canal all without general anesthetic. Never ever ever ever again. :eek:
I left bruises on the attending nurse’s hand during the D&C, while she kept telling me to breathe. You breathe, Bitch! I’m trying not to scream this butcher’s practice down!! That particular procedure will NEVER be done again on this body without knockout drugs. There was scarring around the cervix, you see…
No one warned me that the laser repair of a torn retina would HURT. And by hurt I mean completely beyond agony – mine. Had I KNOWN, I could have taken lots of good drugs that I have at home to help abate the pain before I ever got there. It wasn’t like I was driving myself to and from!!
Again I had some ass of a nurse telling me to breathe. I may have told her to fuck off. I KNOW I cussed out the surgeon. Loudly. And then the eye doctor who recommended this guy. That particular procedure shall NEVER be done again on this body without good drugs imbibed In Advance.
And last but not least, the Saga of the Infected Tooth. Did you know INFECTED TISSUE DOES NOT RESPOND TO LIDOCAINE??? Something for you all to remember.
The utter bleep of an oral surgeon who made the first attempt managed to do an epic fail on me. Not only did the surgery go south, she didn’t get all the infected tissue. It took another OS – after I snarled at my dentist about her bad taste in OS – to fix the problem.
Unfortunately it was only under laughing gas - which I discovered to my horror really doesn’t do much for me. I had her all freaked out because I cried through the whole thing. She’d never had anyone do that to her before??? Honey, u need to go back to OS school for a refresher!!!
As a result, thanks to all this drama, I now cannot have major work like dental implants or big time tooth repairs unless I’m Under. Similar oral work forever more will NEVER be done again without IV sedation.
Lots of IV sedation… 
I got hit in the face with a baseball bat. It broke one of my front teeth and ripped a 2-inch gash in my eyebrow. That part wasn’t so bad. Worse than getting hit in the first place was getting stitches in my eyebrow with no anesthetic. But the worst part came at the dentist. I had had a root canal in the tooth previously so the dentist started drilling the tooth without novocaine. The root canal (which had been done by the dentist who was now torturing me) was incomplete and the pain was awful. The dentist told me to quit being a baby and he kept drilling. He didn’t believe that I was in pain. I sat there for hours while he worked on a tooth with a live nerve.
He did a terrible job of crowning the tooth so I spent 30 years with an ugly front tooth. I didn’t want any dentist to touch it after what I had gone through. I finally had it replaced a few months ago in a completely painless procedure.
It was in Reno. I only did that to watch you die. You didn’t. Sucked all the fun out of that.
Dear God that has to be the worst thing, and the pain goes on and on.
I’ve had a few nasty migraines, including one in which my face felt like it was sliding off. While driving home in at night. In the rain.
I’ve bent my thumbnail back halfway.
The worst pain, I think, was whateverthehell I did to my lower back a year and a half ago. The doctor thinks it was a muscle spasm.
Hit the side of my mouth, breaking a tooth absess. NOTHING else comes close. Amazingly, the damn thing drained all by itself.
abscess on my vulva, I nearly fainted.
A year later an abscess on my stomach.
I had a labrum tear in my left shoulder. If I moved a certain way, I would see a flash of bright light and be in intense pain for about 15 seconds.
Then I had surgery to correct it. I had never felt such pain. It went on and on and on…I slept in a chair for a month because I could not lay down. the painkillers dulled it a little but Jeebus, it hurt.
I have no pain now, but if I had to do it over again…I think I would pass.
Delivered a baby over 48 hours, with 36 hours at 2 minutes apart.
(I’m not making this up. It was complicated. There were 3 suction attempts and a forceps delivery.)
I win.
The most painful-looking thing I ever SAW was when I watched my aunt put her hands down through the meat tenderizer (think Swiss Steak) in my dad’s butcher shop. It didn’t shut off until the blades were clear back in her knuckles. Brrrrrr!
Migraines for overall misery (pain + duration). I’ve had a few where I just wanted to pry my eyeball out with a spoon and keep digging until I got all the pain out.
Gastric/esophageal spasm for the highest ratio of pain to time. I’ve had gallstones, and I’ve had kidney stones. Think of that kind of pain, but concentrated into 20 minutes or so.
Had the dead, burned skin scrubbed off of my arms and face after a flash fire. Two people were doing it. On one side there was an old man doctor. On the other side was a young girl that was trying to be nice to me and be gentle. That ended up being worse because it took much longer. I eventually convinced her to copy the old guy and just get it done faster.