Gaahh. I did this once when I was six. I learned my lesson early.
Most pain. Hmm. How about the time I was cutting trees down, and the chainsaw kicked back into my knee and cut halfway through? That stung a lil bit. On the plus side, I got 6 weeks off from work as I couldn’t drive. Whee.
Massive facial reconstruction was okay. Just a throbbing ache for a few weeks and 100’s of stitches to remove. And no, no painkillers for me, ever. Plus, with my jaw wired shut, would have been tough to swallow pills.
Breaking arms and fingers wasn’t too bad. Neither has burning myself ever bothered me.
Chainsaw massacree to the knee, a lil bit.
I’ve been in blinding pain before, but the worst that comes to mind was when I had to get steroid shots in a nerve in my spine for several weeks. When the needle actually hit the nerve…good googley goo, the pain was beyond belief. The doctor warned me that it was going to feel like my left arm was on fire and he wasn’t kidding. (I was strapped down so I couldn’t move). I think the entire hospital heard me screaming.
:eek: How’s your vision? The ophthalmology department I work in had a pre-teen kid who wasn’t wearing goggles and got shot in the eye with a paintball, and it actually compressed the eyeball vertically. I think after pretty much every specialist in the department worked on him, his best vision in that eye, measured with glasses on, was about 20/200. Still, that’s pretty impressive all things considered.
I had all four wisdom teeth done at one time with just novocaine. Two were semi impacted. I ate popsicles and aspirin for the next few days.
I had a growth cut out of the bottom of my right foot. It went bad and I had to have multiple treatments. each time the pain killer injection was horrible. Having to put my foot down for the shot was agonizing.
I gave birth without an epidural. Via caesarean. Unfortunately, you don’t pass out and you don’t die. I’m not sure if this is in the right thread because it was so beyond “pain” that there are no words for it.
Fractured patella. The docs told me that I had broken this bone, and I had no idea what it was. I didn’t care, either, I just wanted it to stop hurting. Eventually I had a lucid moment and asked them, politely under the circumstances, just what the hell a patella was.
I guess I was lucky, on the whole. Remember, kids, vodka and concrete blocks do not mix.
That infected sebaceous cyst on my chest hurt like hell, too. And smelled bad. Not up there in the “appallingly painful” category, but who would have known such an inoffensive-looking lump could be so vicious.
I’ve had more than 40 kidney stones over the years, but the worst experience with it was getting a 13 mm stone, a 9 mm stone, a 5 mm stone and a 4 mm stone jammed together in my right ureter close to my kidney. I had to have a lithotomy, with an incision more than half a foot long in my back, and 10 days in the hospital. The thing is, I woke up in the OR as they were moving me from the table back onto a gurney. One person said, “Hey, he’s waking up!” and another said, “Hey, you, go back to sleep, you don’t want to be awake now!”. I thought it was funny that both of them started their sentences with “Hey”. The feeling was like my flank was combusting.
I go to an excellent dentist who closes his office at 2:00 Saturday afternoons. I started feeling tooth pain at 2:30 one cold Saturday afternoon while at work. It got worse and worse. My gum started swelling. The only thing that would relieve it was hot water. I drank a ton of hot tea, went home and drank a ton of hot soup.
It got so bad I decided to ask my neighbor to take me to the emergency room. She wasn’t home. I lay down on my couch to wait.
When I heard her coming in, I raised my head to see the clock. I hit that side of my jaw on the couch arm.
No pain will ever be greater than that split second. The top of my head damn near exploded. I jumped up, grabbed my jaw and started pacing back and forth. After four runs, I lay down thinking “That’s it. I am going to die.” I then fell sleep and woke up at 4 a.m. The pain was gone.
My dentist told me I had an absess that broke when I hit my jaw on the counch arm.
As far as intense, lasting pain, I’ll go with a particularly nasty case of malaria(a fat man jump roping on your liver or kidneys about every 5 hours, with him stepping on each individual muscle in between).
The runner-up would be when I was shot through the left hand and into my right shoulder. I wasn’t wearing body armor and it hit quite a few nerves. The shoulder was a bit gammy for a few weeks or so but I recovered almost fully(can’t throw a ball, swing a club, etc.). As for how it felt: like being hit with a hammer and then seconds later having cigars put out on your skin. You don’t really feel much else after, thank god.
I’d forgotten about this one, but the spinal for my second c-section didn’t really take. As my doctor began cutting, I said I could feel that. Actually I think I mostly just gasped it out, being strapped down and already loopy from the other drugs.
He asked me what I wanted him to do. I hissed, “HURRY!” Once my son was born, the nurses asked if I wanted to hold him. I told them to knock me out right that second. Ye gods I didn’t want to hold him, I wanted to not feel what I was feeling.
I think they didn’t really take me very seriously because I’m not a screamer when in pain, I totally shut down and usually puke. And I was puking but I also always puke with a spinal anyway.
Another vote for kidney stones. I would never have believed something so tiny could cause such agony. I had two within one year, and that experience has significantly raised my pain threshhold. For the uninitiated, imagine a red-hot length of barbed wire being dragged slowly through your guts. It took $120 of injected narcotics to numb the pain, and even then I could actually* feel the damn thing moving*!
In '05 my stomach perforated. I cried like a little girl and begged God to take me home. I am not using hyperbole when I say that if there had been a switch that would make the pain stop but also from which I would not wake up, I would have hit it.
A guy who works for me tell the story that when he told his mother - a nurse - about it she said: I’m sorry, I know you were really fond of him. He told her that I lived through it. She says that living through it is rare.
I had a parrot at the time. Because the resulting operation and recovery took several months, my friends found a new home for her. Her first few weeks in her new home she kept to herself, but they had a baby monitor in her room and when no one was there she would say: God help me over and over.
She could only have heard that on that night. I don’t use that phrase ever. She could only have heard that when I was screaming it at the top of my lungs. Those were her first words.
The event changed me. I am more fearful, more emotional. I tear up more easily. I am more likely to respond with aggression if I think I’m in danger. I am not the same man I once was. Some of my friends think it is for the better, some like me as I was.
Acute: Ingrown toenails – the first on the right, the second on the left. Blinding, shooting stars of pain every time I bump the end of the toe. The day I got the right one removed, I cried with relief when I got home. I need to schedule the removal of the left one.
Chronic: Flare-ups of my RSI in my hands and arms. When it’s bad, I can trace the line of every nerve from the tips of my fingers, up through the forearms through the elbows, along the shoulders into the trapezius muscles, up the back of my neck over the top of my scalp and into my temples. It feels like the nerves themselves are actually on fire burning their way out of my skin – coupled with a dull ache in the joints that will turn into a sharp stabbing pain with any joint movement. And there are a lot of joints in your fingers, hands, and arms.
When i get a migraine it is by far worse than any pain I have ever felt in my life.
I would like to think that there is a point where is so muc pain you passout but that would be a dream come true when I get one.
I asked a friend who was in a car acedent about the pain he felt during the acedent and he said he didsn’t feel a thing he just felt warmth in his leg. His leg was crushed under the dashboard and he was stuck while he waited for the parametics to arive. The other guy in teh car broked his leg ina few parts aswell, and had a metal bar go threw his leg. He also claims he disn’t feel to much pain if any. He said it was mainly discomfort. He didn’t even know he had a giant hole threw his leg entill they told him when he was on the hospital.
I was amazed when i hard this from them. I would have thought haveing your legs broke in a few places would be extremely painfull.
I ruptured my right Achilles when I was 17. I’m sure there are many things worse, but I would have gladly smashed my head into a wall for hours than have that happen.