When I was in third grade, while riding my bike, a stick somehow managed to interpose itself in the spokes of my front wheel and I did what I’m pretty sure was a 540 degree flip. I broke my left arm pretty good: my forearm had a distinct offset right in the middle.
That wasn’t the part that really hurt.
The part that really hurt came a few weeks later, when it turned out that the bone wasn’t setting straight, and they’d have to re-break and re-cast it. My dad took me to the hospital to have it done. After this, he was no longer allowed to take me to the hospital. See, the doctor asked my dad if I should get a shot for the pain. And instead of answering the doctor, he asked me if I wanted a shot. I was a little kid! I had no idea what was going on, I just knew I didn’t like needles, so of course, I said no. So the nurse has me lay on the examination table and extend my arm. Then they start hanging weights off of it. First a little weight, which is uncomfortable, on account of the partially healed fracture. Then, more weight, which starts to hurt. Then more weight. At this point, we’re in “Most pain ever” territory. And that’s still not the part that really hurt. Because that’s when the doctor comes back in.
The doctor looks at his clipboard, looks at me, and sets down the board. And then he snaps my arm like a twig.
My dad says that tears shot horizontally out of my eyes a good three feet.
Anyway, moral of the story is, my dad is a dumbass. “He said he didn’t want a shot!” Jesus, did he ever catch hell from my mom over that one.
Oh, Miller, speaking as a mom, that made me cry. Any pain my child endures is worse than any I feel, ten fold.
I have had two kids, no drugs either time. Giving birth to my older son 20 years ago, lots of tearing and stitching (TMI, I know), but that didn’t come CLOSE to the back labor. I couldn’t even breathe. I hoped for death. I kid you not. No pain has even come within spitting distance.
It’s hard to quanitify pain. I can’t tell if it was the migaines when I woke up hearing someone moaning and realizing it was me, where I couldn’t make myself crawl into the kitchen for meds because the light over the stove was on. The gallbladder attack where I was writhing on the stretcher, begging for pain meds. Maybe the worse was the abcessed tooth that had the right sid eof my face swollen and puffed out for 2 days. My whole head throbbed and I could taste teh infection draining.
Left ACL. By far. Nothing else even comes close. Not the destruction of my left ankle, not the snapping of my left radius into the nerve cord in my left arm, not Joanie leaving Chachi…nothing.
Hands down kidney stone, passed one in the bathroom at home, after it was all said and done i did not move for several hours, i refused to go to the hospital until the next day simply so i didn’t have to move at ALL!!!
When I was nine, I jumped on a couch, on the arm of which my father had set a boiling hot cup of coffee ten seconds earlier. It landed on my ankle, where normally it would have simply scalded me, which would have hurt but wouldn’t have been too terribly bad. Instead it soaked into my sock, which acted as a boiling hot compress, which boiled my ankle for a good fifteen seconds before my father managed to get me in the shower.
Took most of the skin (several layers worth) off the entire circumference of my ankle. Technically second degree because there was no charring, but the doctor told me it was pretty much as bad as a it’s possible for a second degree burn to be, and was only second degree because it was water and couldn’t char.
I had the image of sock ribs branded into my ankle for a year.
I’ve had three kids – one at home with no drugs, mega-back-labor and some tearing, and twins at 42 weeks gestation in the hospital by c-section. Of all my obstetrical-type pain, the nurse’s clumsy struggles inserting the catheter for the c-section was the worst. It still doesn’t compare with the ear infection that ruptured my eardrum when I was seven – like having a headfull of broken Christmas ornaments and hot, circulating caramelized sugar.
On that note I had a partial glossectomy to remove a growth on my tongue (turned out to be benign). Basically the doctor shaved off part of the side of my tongue. He also scoped my throat to make sure I had nothing else suspicious in there. I had to be intubated through my nose. When I woke up the pain was excruciating and I couldn’t tell anyone. Not only did my tongue hurt but so did my throat and my nose and I had a nose bleed. When I was able to communicate with the nurse that I was in a lot of pain they gave me liquid tylenol. Shortly after that all the blood I had swallowed made me nauseous and I started puking. Since I couldn’t keep the tylenol down they gave me a nice demerol shot. That was really nice. Cherry flavored tylenol and blood coming up is very not nice, but demerol was quite nice.
Did I mention that the demerol was nice?
A very close second to the tongue pain has to be anything involving eyes. I had growths called pterygiums (also benign, yes I have a lot of growths) removed from both eyes (at different times) and I had a recent bout of uveitis, all of which were extremely painful. Eye pain hurts a lot because any movement of your head makes it worse.
I’ve had two kids via caesarian section, and waking up when the pain killers have worn off is pretty horrendous. However, nothing comes close to the pain from a Brazilian wax.
For sheer ‘‘worst acute pain ever’’ I’d have to say menstrual cramps, in particular one episode where I begged my mother for death at about the age of 12.
I had knee surgery in high school, and they say that hurts, but it couldn’t really compare to my wisdom tooth extraction earlier this year. They put me out so the surgery itself was nothing, but afterward they gave me some pain medicine that made me want to throw up every time I took it. So I spent the following two weeks agonizing between taking the medicine and enduring the pain. And it took a month before I could even open my mouth all the way. I don’t know why it took so long to heal, but that sucked.
But not worse than the cramps.
I dunno, I’ve never had anything excruciating really happen to me. My life instead has been made up of 1,000 little invasive and moderately painful medical procedures that simultaneously give me a vague fear of medical professionals and most likely erroneously lead me to believe I have a high pain tolerance.
I’ve blown an ACL, had a kidney stone and had my gallbladder taken out because of gallstones. The ACL was nothing compared to the stones, and I don’t know which hurt worse.
Reach around to the small of your back and locate your kidney. Yeah, right about there. Now imagine someone starting to drive in a nail about six inches long, right in that spot. One quarter of an inch at a time. And they won’t quit.
Same thing for the gallstones, except visualize the nail being driven in the front, in the vicinity of the xyphoid process.
I, too, have gout, but I’d much rather do the Riverdance wearing wooden shoes during a gout attack than have another kidney stone.
There was one time when, in 8th grade, I smashed two fingertips in a sheet metal cutter and the doctor relieved the pressure by sliding a scalpel under my fingernal. That one made me see stars, but it didn’t last as long as the kidney stone pain did.
Most recently I tore scar tissue away from the mesh used in my hernia repair. That was fairly painful but my own stubborn ways (aka stupidity) made it worse since I continued doing the power yoga and Pilates that tore the blasted scar tissue in the first place.
I finally realized I needed to listen and obey my surgeon’s instructions to **stop **working out when I realized I was splinting my belly just to breathe and walk. Even with the splinting, I was breathing very shallowly to avoid pain but it didn’t really work. To make things more interesting, I was working with a bunch of med/surg nurses who, when they heard what was going on, basically told me what a stupid ninny I was to keep working out.
Did I mention I’m stubborn?
It’s still not healed, and he did warn me it might take two freaking months. TWO MONTHS!
Other than that, I’ve heard I was a complete ninny to not see the doctor for the three weeks I had symptoms of appendicitis. Yes it hurt a lot, but I really don’t like going to the doctor’s. I finally went when I puked, because I hate puking even more than I hate going to the doctor’s. Apparently if I’d waited another 12 hours, that would have been a Very Bad Thing.
When my liver/kidneys become inflamed it makes me almost suicidal. Apparently it’s nothing serious (although nobody knows what it is) but I’m thankful to have the Demerol nevertheless.
Dislocating my right knee, which has happened three times to me. Worse than spinal taps, of which I’ve had two. The pain of the knee dislocating was so pervasive it left me with a sort of mild PSTD; when I think I may twist my knee, or fall, or even see a knee injury on TV, I get a vivid flashback to that pain. Makes me sit up straight every time.
I had a ruptured ear drum due to infection, not once but twice as a young teen. I distinctly remember lying in my bed sobbing, wishing for death.
That made my TMJD pain more bearable as an older teen. Sans infection, it wasn’t as bad.
But to be honest, nothing that’s happened to me seems to even come close to what you guys have been describing. I think the greatest pain I’ve ever felt is while reading this thread. Yowza!!
Mine is definitely the time I stepped on a large piece of broken glass while wading. The shots for pain while they stitched me up were doing nothing and it took a dozen stitches.
The worst pain ever for me was when I busted my ankle campaigning two years ago. My stars and garters, that hurt.
A close second was landing in Amsterdam with a cold. Suddenly I have an ice pick in my head and I’m swearing a blue streak in front of a nonplussed church lady from Indiana. I seriously thought I must be having a stroke or something, and I double-timed it to the airport nurse who told me it was a sinus thing. Thank heavens it subsided rather quickly. I now never fly without Tylenol and take a double hit right before landing.
Did you dislocate the kneecap, or the knee itself? Dislocating the knee joint is really serious. I dislocated my kneecap once. I’d say it was the most painful thing. The doctors at the hospital said it’s more painful than breaking a bone.