For the worst sharp pain I reckon it’s a toss up between shingles on my back and head and the worst of a gout outbreak. Either way, it’s several days of cussable hurt.
Still, the perforated ulcers I used to get once a month were three days of absolute, “How did I piss off God?”, nauseous misery.
My broken arms hurt, but it wasn’t really excruciating. The real pain came from having the left one set. Thank goodness the right one hadn’t moved. I think shock keeps you from feeling the worst at first. With luck, by the time the shock wears off, someone is giving you painkillers.
When my back went out the last time.
I managed to make it downstairs by holding onto the bannisters with both hands, walking along the railing, and onto a kitchen chair, but I was sweating and (my wife says) deathly pale.
The emergency medics were going to get me onto the gurney. They picked me up by both arms. And the spasm that happened then was to all other spasms as a paper cut is to bilateral amputation of both legs. It hurt so badly I actually grayed out, and began to faint.
And the dummies put me back down. Ten minutes and as much morphine as they were allowed to administer later, we got ready to try again. And I said, “Give me some gauze or something to bite on, and don’t stop. Just get me up there and let’s do this.”
So they did.
The bad part was trying to draw my knees down from my chest so they could strap me in. I did not scream, mostly because I was fainting again.
Not pleasant.
Regards,
Shodan
I’m glad I already ate :eek: Well for me, it’s when I partially dislocate my left shoulder. I dont think it’s anything as bad as most of the replies in here, but it’s a stabbing, searing pain that makes me tear up every time. The first was the worst because I didn’t know what was happening. Now when it happens I can usually lean over and have it automatically pop back into place within a few minutes. Then it’s sore for about a week afterwards and is very apt to re-injure itself, but that’s not so much painful as scary.
When my left ankle and knee both decided to start paying me back for all those years of wearing high heels, moshing and other horrible acts and I needed steroid shots. Holy shit but the pain while walking made me sick.
Even after shattering my wrist, I’d still have to say migraines. Sure, breaking my wrist made me grey out and keen in pain and all, but migraines are friggin relentless. You get a good cycle going with migraines and you get caught in a feedback loop of bounceback pain from the medications and you end up like I did once, sitting on the floor next to the toilet, crying because you are so sick and can’t make yourself throw up and your head has been hurting for what seems like forever and you’d willingly submit to experimental brain surgery by Nazis for even a 25% chance of never having another migraine for as long as you live.
I did go to the neurologist after that and get reassessed and put on suppressive therapy. Of course, being on Topamax daily for migraine suppression has its own problems, but it helps. You still dance a dance of taking the acute meds at exactly the right time when you feel a headache coming on.
Demerol doesn’t do a thing to relieve my migraine pain except make me not care that I have the pain, and make me unable to poop for a week. 
I’ve splashed a ladleful of molten white metal on my arm, I think that’s the worst.
I had craniofacial surgery when I was 14 - it involved slicing my head (not skull, just the skin) literally straight across the top of my head from ear to ear. The majority of the work (and therefore the swelling) was on the right side of my face. After the surgery, they left a shunt in to help the blood drain. The shunt was a narrow rubber tube running underneath the skin from my right forehead across my forehead to just behind my left ear, where they left a stitch open, to run the shunt out through to a collection bulb.
After a miserable night in the hospital, it’s time for me to go home. yay. The resident comes in to sign me out, and says “oh, we’ll have to remove the shunt before you go.” I say ok. He then braces his hand over my left ear, grabs the shunt tube, and yanks. That millisecond in which the tube is ripped out of my head was the most painful of my life. It hurt so much I didn’t even cry out - I just saw black, and then it was over.
In the resident’s defense, it would have been much worse if he had warned me - I would have tensed, and I’m sure it would’ve hurt much more.
Third worst pain I ever felt: Having a stick shift transmission fall on my hand. The pain was impressive. I thought for sure I had broken every bone in there, but after about 20 minutes with an ice pack, I was good to go.
Second worst pain I ever felt: Going to close a steel clad fire door that was set in the floor of a shop (for loading tires into the basement storage area) The steel clad door got away from me, and fell right across my big toe. I thought for sure, it had been cut off. Honorable mention: When the doc in the box went to “drill” the nail to relieve the blood build up. He taped a straightened paper clip to a tongue depressor, and heated it red hot. He applied said red hot paper clip to my toe nail. It melted through my nail, and then the almost red hot poker hit the very abused nail bed. That hurt. It also sprayed blood on the celling.
How about both? I fell off the back of a semi and shattered my heel. The pain made the above three items look like nothing. Seeing stars does not even begin to cover it.
As has been said, Demerol is a wonderful thing. The problem is that I was only given vicoden once I was out of the ER. Two 75/750 extra strength Vicoden just barely cut the edge off the pain. No way I could sleep, or even function. The damn doctor would not give me anything stronger. I wound up adding a large glass of wine to my vicoden, and then I could sleep (Do not try this at home kids!)
This went on for three months while the bones healed.
Ya know, reading this makes me see how effed up I’ve been in my life.
I suffer from Hidradenitis Suppurativa which is characterized by clusters of abscesses. Ouch.
Sciatica, I got. When it decides to act up-- ouch.
Woke up while having all 4 of my wisdom teeth pulled-- 3 times. That really wasn’t that painful. It was more scary.
Infection? I got cellulitis once. I didn’t know what it was when it happened. In the morning my pinky toe itched. By noon my foot was massively swollen and went to my podiatrist during lunch. By 3 in the afternoon I was in the ER with my leg ballooned up to my knee. By 11 pm I was in emergency surgery with a Michelin Man leg from hip to heel. Ouch.
Stapled my thumb as a child. Looked a lot worse than it felt.
Papercut my eye at work. More irritating than painful. The eye patch was very annoying, made me a little nauseous and screwed up my balance. Little ouch.
Not so dangerous but really up there on the pain scale-- I took medication that caused night cramps. The ones in my calves hurt but I could manage them with the stretching and the relaxing. Twice I got them in my thigh muscle. Big huge OUCH.
Still, the ruptured ACL is the winner.
Geeze, who do I stay so cheerful all the time?
Let’s see, on a scale of 1-10 from my experience:
Third-degree burn (back of hand; scarred, took weeks to heal) : 5
Having a thumb nail torn off: 7
Herniated disk back spasms and nerve pain : 8-9
Absessed tooth : greater than 10. Like 9000
Surprisingly, I was once stung by a bee on my toe, and for a few seconds the pain was near a 10 (greater than getting a 3d degree burn). YMMV, but godDAMN that hurt; I had no idea bee stings were so painful.
What is a “ruptured ACL”?
For me, the very worst pain wasn’t anything as serious as what I’ve read above - it was excutiating at the time though.
Many years ago, I was in my father’s car as we drove up to the cottage in northern Quebec. The drive was a long one, six hours, and I fell asleep. Suddenly, I woke up with a terrible scream - I had a feeling exactly like I’d imagine having my right nipple torn off with a red-hot pincer would feel like. My dad nearly drove off the road … what it was, was this: a white-faced hornet had somehow gotten into the car and crawled up under my shirt while I slept; inadvertently, I must have annoyed it - so it stung me right on the nipple.
That hurt. A lot. I’d been stung by bees and yellowjackets before and since, but hornets, it seem to me from this solitary experience, pack a greater whallop; and the nipple is not a good place to be stung.
The EMG and nerve conduction tests I had done on my legs, easy.
For those of you that don’t know what this entails: They stick a couple of tiny little needles way down into your muscles, then make you flex them (your muscles). (Remember how you were always told to relax the muscle before you got a shot? There’s a good reason) Repeat process down entire length of both legs. Sometimes, electric shocks were included for fun.
I could feel those needles in my legs for two weeks afterwards, and the sensation returned during and after the nightmares I had about it for the next few months.
My mom went with me to have this done (she’s been in the room for most of my traumatic doctor experiences, more on that later) and she swears I was practically levitating off the table from pain.
As I was leaving the hospital, I told my mother in all honesty I’d rather have my legs cut off than go through that again.
Other runners up would be getting a series of stitches right by my eye when I was 4 or 5, with no anethestetic, while being strapped to a board with large velcro wings, or the time I was having a wart burned off my hand and the pain shot wore off.
Another one for the kidney stone. 6mm, The morphine didnt stop the pain it just made me so tired i forgot about it. I hope that never happens again.
That’s what it felt like when I had to get a potassium drip to go with my blood transfusion. I could feel every nerve in my entire body burning.
The blood transfusion was a result of the worst pain ever, a ruptured ovarian cyst. Internal bleeding is not cool. I remember it hurting so bad that I fainted at the hospital, and woke up screaming so loud I drew a crowd.
As I was lifting my leg to step over some junk on the floor, I caught the square corner of a desk just under my kneecap. The pain was so intense I was immediately sick, but I managed not to puke. I’m pretty sure this was the most pain I’ve ever felt - worse than breaking my arm, worse than tearing my shoulder doing benchpress (I heard the rip), worse than picking up a soldering iron by the wrong end.
I had part of a nail removed without anesthesia. I’d like to expand, but then I’d have to think about it. [must uncurl fingers to type]
Tear of the anterior cruciate ligament in the knee.
Regards,
Shodan
The earaches I had when I was 4 years old… feeling like my brain was exploding for 12 hours at a time. Happened every few months until I was 8. The feeling of mingled agony and futility is something I’ll probably never forget, and my mother could do nothing but turn the pillow so the cooler side was facing up.
(if there was something else that could have been done, at this point I’d rather not know.)
Oh yeah… and my father’s bathroom surgery on my ingrown toenail when I was 14… that was a real winner too. It’s amazing how the pain receptors in the toe seem to hit all points in between as they travel up to the spine.
I’ve torn an ACL. It was bad, but absolutely nothing compared to the time the dentist was working on a tooth that had 4 roots instead of 3, which was how many he had deaden via a root canal. When he jabbed that dental tool into a live root the world disappeared into a white blaze. I have no idea what I said or did, but when I opened my eyes he and his assistant were staring at me ashen faced and completely stunned with shock.
I got up and walked out the door, never to return.