What's the greatest pain you've ever felt?

In My Humble Opinion
101

ingrown toenails – had three removed at the same time (both big toes; one had both corners ingrown.)

when i was wheeled out, the nurse at reception told me she had never in her life heard someone scream like i had.

in case you don’t know how ingrown nails are removed, i’ll share. first, you are given shots of local anaestesia which won’t work. then, the doctor uses a scalpel to cut through the nail, into the nail bed, from the tip down through the root. next the doctor grips the cut piece of nail with pliers, and yanks out the slice of nail, root and all. it might take multiple yanks if the nail is stubborn. and if the whole piece of root decides to not come out with the nail, it will take some digging & more yanking. even more fun when the process immediately starts again on another toe.

i couldn’t walk for almost two weeks. it was three days before the opiates dulled the pain even just when i was laying in bed with my feet raised.

102

[QUOTE=threnodyangelfire]
I can remember tripping over my head.
[/QUOTE]

You win the Funniest Remark about the Most Painful Experience prize.

I’ve sat here picturing this, and I can’t help giggling.

Sorry.

snicker

:frowning:

:smiley:

103

Getting hit by a truck. As I lay in the street, I thought that my leg had been knocked off. I would come to in the emergency room and scream for morphine. They would tell me that I couldn’t have any painkillers since I was going into surgery, I would say “ok, ok…”, and pass out for five or ten minutes until I came to again and started screaming for morphine.

The only funny point was when the nurses asked for a urine sample, and I couldn’t give one (stress will do that to ya’.) Thinking that I might be shy, they asked my father to help. I remember him grimacing and mumbling, “Hey, they need for you to pee.” I tried and then screamed “No, it was blown off too?!?!”

At some point, they asked where I was hurt, and I screamed “My freaking leg!” The nurses explained that they needed to know what else hurt, and I told them that my shoulder hurt a little and my mouth felt funny. As it turns out, I had a separated shoulder, a broken nose and three broken teeth, along with the broken femur and muscle and arterial damage.

104

[QUOTE=bob_loblaw]
ingrown toenails – had three removed at the same time (both big toes; one had both corners ingrown.)

when i was wheeled out, the nurse at reception told me she had never in her life heard someone scream like i had.

in case you don’t know how ingrown nails are removed, i’ll share. first, you are given shots of local anaestesia which won’t work. then, the doctor uses a scalpel to cut through the nail, into the nail bed, from the tip down through the root. next the doctor grips the cut piece of nail with pliers, and yanks out the slice of nail, root and all. it might take multiple yanks if the nail is stubborn. and if the whole piece of root decides to not come out with the nail, it will take some digging & more yanking. even more fun when the process immediately starts again on another toe.

i couldn’t walk for almost two weeks. it was three days before the opiates dulled the pain even just when i was laying in bed with my feet raised.
[/QUOTE]

Guy, your doctor was doing it wrong or something.

I had ingrown nails removed probably 6 times in my life. I used to get them ALL THE TIME when I played soccer. I usually waited (like a fool) until they were badly infected until seeing a doctor.

Even then - the extraction wasn’t THAT bad. It certainly wasn’t pleasant - but with local anesthetic for the actual operation and ibuprofen afterwards, it was far from horrible.

105

[QUOTE=lisacurl]
… 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.
[/QUOTE]
Yep, I’d have to say migraines, and I’ve given birth twice (once without drugs, once by caesarian).
The pain from migraines far outpaces the pain of childbirth.
I’ve had a couple where the pain was so bad, I was actually hoping I’d die, because at least then my head wouldn’t hurt anymore.

106

[QUOTE=bathsheba]
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.
[/QUOTE]

WHY?!?! I didn’t know it was even possible to slice through someone’s abdomen and uterus while they were conscious and unmedicated.

107

[QUOTE=GameHat]
Guy, your doctor was doing it wrong or something.

I had ingrown nails removed probably 6 times in my life. I used to get them ALL THE TIME when I played soccer. I usually waited (like a fool) until they were badly infected until seeing a doctor.

Even then - the extraction wasn’t THAT bad. It certainly wasn’t pleasant - but with local anesthetic for the actual operation and ibuprofen afterwards, it was far from horrible.
[/QUOTE]

i don’t discount that it may have been done improperly. and it may just be that the anaestesia did not work for me.

but fuck. i’d rather spend two weeks strapped to a ball-kicking machine than get my toenails pulled out again.

108

I worked at a place that built machinery. One time a real big strong guy was moving a 150 lb bronze bearing. He put it on a flat metal table right on top of his penis. He screamed for help . When it was moved everybody was laughing and sympathising at the same time. But every time I think of him I still get a little sympathy pain.

109

When I was four my father let me play outside in the sun all day without sunscreen and wearing nothing more than shorts. The horrible full-body second-degree burns had boiled and blistered up by that evening. My back looked like the spawning sequence from Gremlins. I couldn’t sleep on my near-equally burnt stomach either. After a few days, I began to peel. Somehow or god-knows-where, my parents - private college graduates - got the idea that the sloughing skin needed to be forcibly peeled off of my back to speed up the healing. I was made to stand on the bathroom counter facing the large mirror while wearing only my underwear. Both of my parents then took turns peeling back-length strips of skin from my still-burnt back. I clearly remember seeing the snake skin like strips being torn from my back and placed into a glass one after the other. I was shrieking and my four-year-old mind was grasping for any sort of reasoning to talk them out of this terrible practice, but I was just four and all I could do was scream and beg them to stop. I think the most painful part was when my pleas were continually met by their placid-toned reassurances that this was to make me feel better.

Waterboard me. Ship me to Gitmo any day. For me, that hell cannot be topped.

110

[QUOTE=nyctea scandiaca]
WHY?!?! I didn’t know it was even possible to slice through someone’s abdomen and uterus while they were conscious and unmedicated.
[/QUOTE]

Why?! Medical negligence of course! If it hadn’t happened to me, I would have difficulty believing it was possible too. It sounds fantastic but again, yes unfortunately, it’s possible. I was screaming blue murder at the doctor and then at every-one else while holding my legs on the table to prevent me from kneeing her. Eventually one of the nurses shouted at the anaesthetist who gave me some IV Fentanyl…which prevented me from yelling or moving but didn’t stop me from having sensation. I’m talking hands in my abdomen, squeezing my uterus to stem the PPH. I counted the staples go in, and the pain of that was nothing compared with what I had just experienced, in fact I was relieved because that meant that they were finished and could go home and fuck themselves.

Yeah, there’s a few people around who wouldn’t want to step in front of my car…

111

What a nice, cheery thread! Some of these stories are scarier than all the slasher flicks ever made, especially the stories involving the tongue.

My personal list:

Fourth place: Childbirth, no medication, in the '70s. The “high” that came afterwards made up for it, though.

Third place: Having a ventilator tube hammered down my throat.

Second place: Having the ventilator tube slo-o-o-wly pulled back out again.

First place: Cluster headaches. This pain is so intense as to be an entity in its own right. It is simply indescribable. It is pestilence and genocide and a thousand blazing suns and global nuclear destruction combined, formed into a point, and rammed repeatedly into my left eye for 6 hours a day, every stinking day beginning at the same exact time, for 3 to 4 months.

Gah. Now my stomach hurts…

112

[QUOTE=nyctea scandiaca]
WHY?!?! I didn’t know it was even possible to slice through someone’s abdomen and uterus while they were conscious and unmedicated.
[/QUOTE]

In my case, it was an improperly done spinal anesthetic. I was immobile from it but could feel everything. Fortunately they DID hurry, and they DID knock me out the second my son was born.

Bathsheba’s experience sounds FAR worse than mine because at least I was out for putting Humpty Dumpty together again.

Honestly that experience was one reason I knew I didn’t want any more children.

113

[QUOTE=Ro Carter]

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.
[/QUOTE]

I’ve never had a pain shot from getting a wart burned (well, really it’s frozen) off. I’ve gone through two (soon to be three) burns on a wart that pretty much takes up the whole right side of my right middle fingernail. Each burn consists of about five minutes of applying and re-applying liquid nitrogen to the wart. Every now and then they take a file to it, too. It hurts, but I’ve never so much as taken an Advil for it. That must have been one big wart!

As far as my worst pain, I’m pretty lucky. I had my appendix out in 2005. I never would have gone to the hospital had it not been for my husband, who had an appendectomy when he was 12 and knew better than to fuck with abdominal pain. I rated it as a 5 on the scale before the shot of Dilaudid (and the follow up shot of Phenargan to make sure I didn’t puke from the first shot, which I almost did anyway). After that, the pain was a solid 1 or 2, no worse than menstrual cramps. It was the recovery from surgery that was a complete bitch. I couldn’t have it done laproscopically because the appendix was kind of tucked behind something, so I ended up with a three-inch incision. You never realize how much you use your abdominal muscles for everything you do until every movement of them causes you extreme pain. Did you realize how much you use your abdominal muscles to pee? I did not. My first trip to the bathroom after surgery was excruciating. First I had to stagger the five whole feet to the bathroom, and then when I was finally sitting down (hey, you have to use your abs to sit!) the actual peeing felt like I was pushing hot lava out of me. And then at three in the morning every night, some sadist of a nurse would wake me up and give me shots in each leg to avoid clotting. Those shots were the worst part of the whole experience. I left the hospital with three golf-ball sized knot bruises in each thigh that took about two weeks to heal.

The pain from my 5cm hemorrhagic ovarian cyst in October of last year was worse than the pain from the appendicitis, but at least I didn’t have to have surgery for them. I never want to have abdominal surgery ever again. Reading the stories of c-sections without anesthesia makes me want to vomit.

114

I used to run a two-color offset press, and one time while running a job, I saw a lose piece of paper underneath the color head rollers, laying on top of the shield. I didn’t want to turn off the press, because it was running fine. So, I reached in to jerk the page out. Instead of that happening, it jerked me in.

My right hand got pulled in to the rollers while the press was running. My middle finger was trapped between a rod and the central roller. I tried wheeling my hand back out, but it felt like my middle finger would get pinched off if I did. Luckily while I was screaming and writhing in pain, my coworker called Security, and they came running in about a minute later and started taking the machine apart. I somehow managed to tell them which parts to remove and finally, my finger slipped out. The EMTs came in afterwards and looked at my finger, but it wasn’t broken. I wore a splint for a little while and that was it.

115

[QUOTE=Miller]
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.
[/QUOTE]

Actually, the medical professionals are dumbasses here. It’s frightening to think that they did this without SEDATING you first. Pain medicine wouldn’t have TOUCHED that. This story just further cements my opinion that a large percentage of orthopedists are sadists (and EVERY one I’ve ever encountered has seriously bad patient skills. OK, the guy who dealt with Dweezil’s fairly nasty break was, well, remote, but he was at least not a jerk. So let’s say 95% of the orthos…).

I broke my arm when I was 6, and the jackass came in to set it. Not a word to me, just walked in, picked my arm up, and YANK PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN. IIRC, I had been doing pretty well until then but I wound up howling in pain and spent the next hour, at least, sobbing nonstop (oh, and he didn’t exactly do it right first off, he had to repeat it at least once more that evening until he was satisfied that the bone had knit).

On the OP topic from my own experience, I think it’s not just the individual pain, but the situation (I know I’ve posted these before).

Childbirth (induced, cervix not ready but my water had broken so no choice), bad medical care, epidural botched… I was in tears through the contractions and pretty much ready to confess to war crimes and my biggest regret to this day was only hitting the OB once, and not hitting the anesthesiologist at all… This was not fun.

Nerve conductance test and electromyelogram: basically I was lying on a table while they stuck needles into leg muscles and ran currents through them, or touched me with gradually increasing amounts of electricity to see what I could feel. That was, in its way, worse than the childbirth. Because after the first jolt, I knew there’d be another worse one so I had the fun anticipation part. Then they finished that leg and DID THE OTHER ONE :eek: . As I left, I decided that it was quite possibly worse than the above-described childbirth, and was definitely worse than the poorly-anesthetized C-section.

The really sudden, severe ones aren’t fun either. Chair with somewhat flexible but also somewhat rigid plastic seat. Resting on (and supposedly attached to) vertical legs. Not quite attached to one of the vertical legs. Hand grasping front edge of chair, scootching chair while rump lifts to allow chair to scootch. Hand slides forward a bit. Into gap between chair leg and plastic seat. Rump (weighed down by large person) lands on seat, finger, and chair leg. Finger loses encounter. Finger’s owner nearly loses breakfast (note: this was lunchtime) onto tray, in front of tableful of strangers at client’s office. The advantage of this was it faded from SEARING to merely Ow! in a very short time, but that SEARING moment was, well, memorable. That may, possibly, be the worst single pain I’ve had.

Dental pain (and difficult to numb) teeth are no fun either. I have to say that’s the one that has had the most lifelong impact causing pretty severe phobia. It’s not all that much fun when they have to peel you off the ceiling just from the pain of the NOVOCAINE. Nowadays though I’ve found a dentist who is generous with the happy pills (oral sedation) and life has improved a lot.

116

[QUOTE=Megabyte100]
(snip) 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.
[/QUOTE]
Describes a few moments in my life.

117

When I broke my back. It didn’t really hurt until the paramedics started to move me. Then the pain was like a blinding white flash in my head, worse than I could have imagined before it happened. The good thing was it only lasted a couple of seconds before I passed out.

118

I had a rearend-ectomy once. Fissure/Hemorrhoid-type operation. I hadn’t been diagnosed with sleep apnea yet, so when they gave me the morphine in the OR, I stopped breathing. The medical staff concluded that I was allergic to pain meds, so they just knocked me out sans pain killers.

I woke up in the OR, on a really skinny table. I felt just like someone that had sat on a running chain saw. They started giving me Demerol, which made me want to not quite kill myself. The night nurse was going off shift the next morning, and gave me an extra 5mg.

I went from writhing agony to super hero status. The only thing that I needed was my cape. My ex picked me up, and away we went. It was Thanksgiving, and the Demerol wore off shortly after arriving at home.

No pharmacies open, either.

I had a temporary crown installed on a busted tooth. The dentist did not do a root canal. When the permanent crown was ready, he had two assistants sit on my legs. He then removed the temp crown, and rinsed the area underneath with lukewarm water. I tried to run away.

I had to have steroid shots in my heel for plantar faciatias. The foot doctor injects the needle then slowly follows the nerve, while injecting the steroids.

You know how Doctors say “This may sting a little”, when they know you’re going to soon be in extreme pain?

This guy said “You’re going to be extremely uncomfortable.” He handed me my hat. “Do you want me to wear this?”

“No. You might need something to throw up in.” Apparently I was not allowed to yakk on his clean floor. I didn’t throw up, either. I sure showed him.

I did however, soil myself halfway through the procedure but did not find out until I got home.

119

Did I miss the explanation, or are all you ACL people just messing with the rest of us and refusing to explain what it is? Alimentary canal ligament? Aural cavity lining? Awesomely-carved lions?

120

[QUOTE=Viridiana]
Did I miss the explanation, or are all you ACL people just messing with the rest of us and refusing to explain what it is? Alimentary canal ligament? Aural cavity lining? Awesomely-carved lions?
[/QUOTE]

Anterior cruciate ligament. It and the PCL (posterior cruciate ligament) run through the middle of the knee.