Vasectomy without painkillers for half of it. Doc went in and did one side, no worries, then tried to do the other and couldn’t get the painkiller injection into the right spot. He told me after about 10 minutes that he didn’t think it was going to happen and we should continue later and I told him to go forward as half of a vas wasn’t going to do me a hell of a lot of good. So I toughed it out. But he had two orderlies hold me down. Damn, that hurt.
And Oy! The swelling afterwards.
Abortion without anesthetic. It was like one of those menstrual cramps that fold you up and take your breath away, only it went on and on. I also gave birth without anesthetic, which was a relative walk in the park.
Another time, I spilled boiling sugar on my finger. I was holding the entire pot and I didn’t want to just drop it, so I gritted my teeth and set it down carefully on the stove before getting my cooked finger to the sink. A goodly chunk of my flesh came away with the sugar, and as the sugar had dripped down over the knuckle, the gap in my finger took some time to heal. I have a most excellent scar now.
I also had frequent migraines as a child that would last for days. I recall one that caused me to curl my hands into fists so tightly that I could not open them myself, and my mother prying them apart for me.
Imagine how bad things were in the olden days? They’d saw peoples legs off if they got a gangerine infection, and often they’d end up dying anyway.
Those must have been some TOUGH people.
Severe sunburn or ear infection. Take your pick.
Weird… I don’t recall the screw removal from my knee as being any more than a fairly intense, dull, deep pain. He sedated me a little, gave me the local, and said “Just holler if you can’t take it, and I’ll stop for a minute.” So we did this funny dance of 2-3 seconds of screw removal, and 5-10 of me resting between.
Not nearly as painful as hurting the knee in the first place, as I recall.
I remember distinctly that he used a Craftsman 1/2" shank variable speed power drill in reverse to back it out. That kind of weirded me out a little bit.
hmmmm, my answer is a bit mundane. It’s a toss up between back labor (for several hours) and delivering an 8.5lb baby without painkillers. Although the after contractions while nursing a day old newborn after a C-section hits like a ton of bricks (and frankly, I’d rather have the bricks.)
ah. Childbirth. Such a rosy, happy time.
Aching Wisdom tooth intermittently for months .
True ,luxurious better then sex, relief when I had it taken out .
And I sincerely mean better then sex ,if Anna Kournakova,Jennifer Aniston and Willow from Buffy had offered me the choice of total unbridled sex with all three of them at once instead of going to the dentist I would have very,very regretfully turned them down.
By the way if they’re reading this the tooths out now ,no pain whatsoever and I always can make free time if I want to.
Just thought Id mention it .
When I was a kid I had really filthy bad sinus headaches, to the point where any movement whatsoever would send endless stabbing pains throughout my face. These would last for days, and I had no pain medication whatsoever and was never taken to a doctor for it.
I had a sty in one eye that took approximately 5.79 geological epochs to travel down the inside of my eyelid, swollen and painful all the way. When it got to the eyelash area, a doctor took a tongue depressor and popped it. He’s so lucky I was about nine at the time and didn’t know how much a ballshot hurts a man, because I was in a perfect spot to retaliate.
Childbirth without any pain meds x 2, not a picnic. Especially the first one, where they gave me pitocin and the kid shot out like a watermelon seed, necessitating about 100 stitches to repair. Ouch. No pain meds for that, as I was breastfeeding. And they wonder why I had the second child at home!
Hitting a tree at 60mph after a tie rod broke in the car I was driving. Had my foot on the clutch trying to get it out of gear as it was airborne since it looked like we might miss the tree and if the car came down under power it would likely send us into three lanes of oncoming traffic. Gear shift lever stuck and we hit the tree with my left leg fully extended. Dislocated hip ensued. It hurt like a bitch getting out of the car on a backboard, but the really fun time was when they had me in the ice cold radiology room and I started shivering. Man, you don’t know fun until you’ve had uncontrollable shivers from shock and cold and you can feel the head of your femur grinding around on the acetabulum. Yup, that was special. No pain meds there, either, since I was scheduled for surgery. Spending a month afterward with a pin through the tib-fib for traction wasn’t a picnic either, and the nine months afterward on crutches and a cane really tested the limits of my ability to withstand chronic “discomfort.” I really love that euphemism, BTW, especially when referring to someone screaming in pain. “Are you experiencing discomfort?” It’s a wonder medical people survive their careers and don’t get strangled or shot by patients in extremis…
The car accident left me with two herniated lumbar discs. I threw my back out putting on a boot right before I drove my car from Sacramento to Lake Tahoe. The pain kept getting worse and worse, so we left Tahoe and started heading back down the hill to get me to a hospital. On the way, I had the most exquisitely full bladder imaginable and begged my husband to stop at a rest area. We did, and he came around to basically pick me up out of the front seat of the car to drag me in to the toilet. When he picked me up, the icy cold air outside caused my back to spasm uncontrollably, and I hung from his arms trying really hard not to scream because the kids were in the back seat and I didn’t want them to freak out thinking I was dying. Gave up on the pissing idea, and had to deal with the back pain, residual shivers and full bladder for an additional two hours until we made it to the hospital. A shot of Demerol was very much appreciated, but not as much as the bedpan!
The wisdom tooth extraction from hell. See, the x-rays did not show that the roots of one of them was entangled with the tooth next to it, so it didn’t pop out like it should. My dentist was not set up for oral surgery, but once begun the thing has to come out, which it eventually did in about sixty pieces. My dentist and his assistants were nearly in tears and incredibly apologetic over the whole situation, especially since my six year old son was out in the waiting room worrying that mom’s being slaughtered in the next room. Then afterward I had to drive home, before the pain meds took effect. Wow, that was a lot of fun!
The root canal where the antibiotic under the seal failed to kill the infection and it blew up into the most abjectly painful pressure imaginable. I really wanted dry ice to freeze it completely and had to be talked out of it. It took most of a day to get hold of my dentist (I was travelling and about 200 miles from home) who then got on the horn to the local emergency room to explain to a doctor how to remove the temporary seal. Once it came out the relief was palpable, and the big gun pain meds my dentist ordered for me took care of the rest. Damn, I loved that guy, too bad I’m 600 miles away now!
My SO agrees that the kidney stone thing is the most horrifyingly painful thing possible to experience, he says it’s not only like pissing glass shards but it has the added fun of feeling the goddamned thing progressing slowly through the body and then down the full length of the penis. He drinks so much water in a day now that I’ve taken this as a cautionary tale, because this is a guy who doesn’t really feel pain at all and resists strenuously making ANY accomodations to avoid it. Therefore, I know that kidney stones are to be avoided at all costs–anything that makes him change his habits like that is truly terrifying!
Another vote for kidney stones here. I’ve never borne children, but my urologist confirmed what some women here have said, that they told him kidney stones were worse than labor.
I remember a thread though where someone spoke about their sister being in labor, at which time she also began to pass a kidney stone.
I can now understand why people can get hooked on painkillers. The only dose of Demerol I’ve ever had was the night of my first attack. I couldn’t imagine hurting any worse than I did, I was a sobbing lump, and felt so embarrassed at how whiny I was. Then after the tests and bloodwork and x-rays I finally got the shot. Oh, the sheer unbridled relief! You don’t know how GOOD the simple lack of pain feels! Pain, what pain? I felt like I was floating an inch above the bed, on a cloud.
I’ve got two:
First…do you remember back in high school biology the disecting trays. Had that gooey black crap in the bottom. Well, it turns out that is petroleum based wax. When it’s melted it is really hot. And it doesn’t flake off like regular wax. ER, scrubby wire brush and acetone over blistered forearm.
The second one was the recovery from achilles tendon tear and subsequent plastic surgery. Skin grafts are not much fun. Particularly the spot they took it from (high back of the thigh).
I sliced my left index finger open with a utility knife, partially severing both tendons and the nerves. That didn’t hurt so much–it was mostly just lots and lots of panic. What hurt was a week later, after the surgery. The local anaesthetic (nerve block?) wore off at around 4 AM. I woke up, feeling as though my finger was being crushed in a vise. Luckily, I had the vicodin by the bedside.
Actually, though, that pain is still slight when compared to the time I broke my right radius and ulna. Again, the break wasn’t super-painful–it only hurt when they made me turn the arm sideways for x-rays–but the nurse trying to give me the axial nerve block (so they could set the bones) damn near killed me. She had to try THREE TIMES to get it in there. I guess she was aiming for a particular nerve cluster, and she said, “Darn, it keeps rolling away.” Imagine someone sticking a knife through your armpit and into your chest. Three times.