Watching some poor woman rupture her ACL on the new American Gladiators brought a real tear to my eye. I’ve torn both ACLs and finally ruptured the right one a few years ago. Giving birth to my twins without the benefit of painkillers was more of a long, slow, protracted agony of varying intensities. The tearing and rupturing of my ACL was pure, unadulterated, omigod!omigod!shootmeplease!shootmenow! — nope, there are not words to discribe the pain I felt when I ruptured my ACL.
Funny but when I was having my babies I yelled and screamed and grunted. When I tore my ACL, I just looked at my friend who was sitting next to me (yes, I tore it sitting down) and said, “I really, really, really fucked up my knee. Oh shit, I really fucked it up. Call my husband.” But there was no screaming. I’m sure that if I was standing I would have immediately fallen to the ground, held my knee gingerly and rolled around and around and around. The other bar patrons would have loved it, I’m sure.
Now you-- got any worst pain stories?
Heh. I came in to say tearing my ACL. I didn’t know if I was going to throw up or pass out. I felt the end of my femur scrape across the top of my tibia. That really sucked.
I’ve had three children, 2 without an epidural. Those were nothing compared to my root canal gone awry. It took many visits to clean out (I apparently have very long roots), the pain management was ineffective (I kept involuntarily grabbing the dentist’s arm), but the worst came when it got infected. I was on heavy-duty painkillers (Mepergan fortis?) and when they wore off in the middle of the night, I’d shoot straight up in bed suddenly screaming. That was SO bad I can’t even describe it. To this day, 15 years later, I have panic reactions just sitting down in a dentist’s chair. Horrible, horrible experience.
my first pseudogout flare. 4th and 5th metatarsils, right foot.
Holy shit, I did labor 2X, I had a kidney infection so bad I was throwing up everything I seem to have eaten for the past week all the way down to my toenails and the ER thought I was in heroin withdrawl, I have broken about 40 or so bones.
NOTHING was as bad as my husband gingerly poking the 2 cm edema to see if it would stay dimpled or fluff back up.
Holy fucking shit. I wanted the ER to just cut the foot off .and put me out of my misery … but then mrAru pointed out that with my luck I would be one of the people that got phantom pain or itching :eek:
It came and went, so my family got me to hospital.
I was put on a stretcher as the pain had subsided. However when the pain returned later the doctor was summoned by hearing the banging of the stretcher agianst the wall as I rocked in agony.
During a plane crash I bit a hole thru the center of my tongue.
That hurt.
A lot.
More than my broken humeri, more than penetrating blunt stab wound by jagged metal into my inguinal canal, more than heart attack, more than previous colonic spasms from insufflation during air-contrast imaging, more than electro-cautery of a lesion between my toes without anesthesia by a sadistic doc. More than getting my glans caught in my zipper.
A couple of bad ones but nothing has YET been so bad I pass out. Kinda wish I had a few times…
Pain is kinda relative to the individual too. Your hangnail may hurt more than my bad sprain.
Some of my worst have been in situations where I could not stop and yell or squirm, the will to live blocks some pain then I think.
How much forewarning you get will also affect the brains ability to function through the pain. That is why bamboo slivers and finger nail beds are such a successful combination.
Hit while riding my bicycle. Lost part of my hamstring and sciatic nerve at the scene, back of thigh “degloved” and open fracture of the femur. I couldn’t even tell where the pain was coming from.
Falling on my ass and breaking my right wrist recently was bad enough that I involuntarily curled up and whimpered in pain - until the endorphins kicked in and suddenly I was trying to convince my husband that I was going to be OK, I just needed to lay down for a while. :rolleyes:
I wish the endorphins worked like that on my migraines. For lasting pain the one that hit me while I was driving (fortunately I had about 30 seconds of notice and pulled over, and my husband drove us home) and turned me into a sobbing wreck was probably it. I was in serious pain for hours there.
You’d appreciate this…one of my sisters split her tongue up the middle as a child. I don’t remember how many stitches she got, but we made her show it all the time till they took the stitches out.
For me, I’d guess it was the time I had an severe gout attack in both feet at the same time. They were swollen to what appeared to be twice their normal size; the skin was purple and downright shiny. A couple of days passed in insane pain till I was able to get some 30 mg indomethacin from my doctor. I couldn’t sit upright, but it did ease the pain. I’ve had an exposed nerve in a broken upper incisor that took a month of dental surgery to dig out. I’ve torn my hand open badly enough to see my bones. (I think all men have gotten their tie caught in their zipper once in their lives.) I’ve had eight M.I.'s. But that gout attack has to be the winner for me.
A couple of summers ago there was something screwed up with my right knee. I don’t really know what it was, but when I tried to straighten my knee against resistance (like trying to rise from a kneeling position) something would go out of place in it. For a couple of weeks I could feel something weird so I was really careful getting up, but one day I forgot and tried to rise normally. Holy crap. I dropped on the floor clutching my leg and screaming while my mother was standing nearby trying to get me to calm down enough to tell her what was wrong. I can’t remember the way the pain felt now, but it was the first time I had cried because of pain in years. I think it was a combination of the actual pain plus panic because I didn’t know exactly what was causing the hurt. Once I straightened my knee, something went “pop!” and the pain subsided, but I was very ginger with for a long time afterward.
Reading some of these, mine sounds like nothing. Degloving looks painful enough, I can’t imagine what it must feel like!
Jeebus, you guys are killing me. I’ve never given birth, broken anything, cut anything bad enough to need stitches, or ever had pain after surgery that was bad enough to make me say more than “hey, I think I’ll take another Percoset.” I was sitting here with a hand clamped over my mouth, with my eyes as big as saucers, reading these. eta: touch wood
eta again: I have hyperextended my knee bad enough to make me cry, and it’s still screwed up to this day, and I had a TMJ problem that would make my jaw go out of alignment sideways where I couldn’t open or close it. That was bad. But still…nothing like the rest of these stories.
I’ve had irritable bowel attacks that made me wish I could pass out to escape the pain. They were worse than unmedicated child birth, hands down. I’m glad to say, however, that I don’t believe they hurt as much as some of the things I’ve read in this thread.
