Yeah, I can understand being upset by that. I mean, there’s always a pamphlet of info that comes from the pharmacy with every 'script (at least at my pharmacy there is), but if you’re sick enough to need Percocet, you’re sure as hell not going to bother reading the fine print!
Wow. That is some major misunderstanding. What was she saying?
I’ve had hemorrhoids, mammograms, four children, and a broken hip, but the feeling I get when the Zantac kicks in is the best.
I used to pooh-pooh (in my head, not audibly) when mom complained about heartburn. Not anymore.
This is such small potatoes compared to some of the stories in this thread, but… I was on a flight recently and had a bit of a headcold. My ear started to hurt when we started descending and no amount of gum chewing or yawning could clear it. So the pain just kept getting worse, and worse, and worse until, finally, the pressure became too much and the tube cleared itself. That popping noise, and the sense of air blowing out of the tube and the immediate relief? Incredible feeling.
Rocketeer: what the heck did the daycare lady say to you???
After my first c-section–I was so exhausted from labor I couldn’t stop shaking, and I was in quite a bit of pain. My little girl was whisked off to get some IVing (she was fine but tired too) and they gave me something–Demerol?–and I slept for hours. Bliss.
Rocketeer I understand completely. My middle child, my darling boy, was having some distress during the labor process. My wife was not to concerned, as she was doped up and not really with it other than pushing.
When he finally got out, he was cacooned in the umbilical. They cut it off of him, and he just laid there. I saw his arm move, very weakly. No crying.
The suction out his mouth and throat. No crying. No breathing.
At this point, every impulse in my brain is screaming at me that my son had died.
The put an ambu bag (sp? that bag that forces air into your lungs…?) on him, and force air into him a few times, and he starts wailing.
The feeling, the physical sensation when he cut loose is still, to date, the most aweseom relief ever. I didn’t realize I had stopped breathing when I saw what was going on, and I bruised my hands gripping the bed rail.
Really?? I take hydrocodone (5/500) all the time. I don’t think it’s all that great.
My heart stopped just reading that. Really. Fatally. I’m dead, now.
… and 3acresandatruck says to say ‘hey.’ 
Oh, man, this is mine. (Except I haven’t taken the rather dramatic solution of childbirth. I think I’m going to have to wait a few more years before that’s an option.) I use Aleve and a hot water bottle instead of ibuprofen, though, since I find it more effective. There’s nothing like going from being hunched over the toilet because you might throw up at any time to being able to sit up like a normal human being. It’s just not right that you should break into a sweat and throw up because of something so mundane as menstrual cramps.
My cramps usually pass after the first two days, unless there’s a clot, and then I can get by without any over-the-counter pain relievers, but those first two days are hell on earth. The cramps always come out the blue, too, as in, “Oh, my back hurts a little, I must have slept funny last night, OH MY GOD, I’M DYING.” It doesn’t happen every month, either, so I jump between a little discomfort one month and wanting the world to end the next.
Maybe it’s because you take it all the time. It doesn’t do anything anymore. Tolerance! it’s not just for racial equality anymore.
I didn’t have an epidural when I was in labor, so for me the greatest relief was when the baby was actually out. No more contractions! No more pushing! No more pain (well, a significant reduction in pain, anyway)! And, a baby!
The worst pain I ever felt was from my initial kidney stone attack. At the ER they couldn’t give me anything until they’d figured out what was wrong with me.
I finally got the only dose of Demerol I’ve ever enjoyed. That’s when I learned how people can get addicted to drugs of any kind. “Pain? What pain?” The relief came on fast, and within a minute I felt as if I was floating an inch above the bed.
As a (great) relief from all these harrowing stories of agony: I haven’t had much in the way of horrible pain in my life, and what there was has for one reason or another gone away too slowly to report in this thread. (This summer, for example, I wrenched my back and discovered that muscle relaxants are my best friends ever. But they didn’t take effect immediately.)
Instead, I’m going to go with the Turkish bath I went to in Córdoba, Spain. I was sun-drenched, hot, exhausted, footsore, rather homesick, and quite museumed out. I arrived in this Turkish bath, which is apparently a restored original from the Moorish period; after using the hot, warm, and cold baths repeatedly, I was given a massage. It was unutterably blissful. Afterwards, I went up to the restaurant above for baklava and mint tea. Best €25 I ever spent.
Lying across two lanes after getting hit by a car and unable to feel my ass and everything below, I freaked out at the thought of a second car running over my legs and forced myself up.
!!!
How badly were you injured?
I think my greatest (physical) relief occurred when I was about 14 and was looking through my Dad’s latest Penthouse mag.
My back is very screwed up and the pain is pretty bad even after a month and a half. Could barely lay down for the first week, followed by an… interesting finals week. Fun times.
I was having an especially bad bout of inflamed Liver/kidney so I made my way to the hospital. To explain the pain a bit, it feels like something about 8 inches in diameter is pressing down into my chest really really hard and no matter what position I sit in, no matter what over the counter pain meds I pop, nothing eases the pain.
When I got to the hospital they had me wait in the waiting room moaning in pain for well over an hour. When they finally got to me, they took about 5 vials of blood and sent them away for testing. After another hour of waiting for the results they came back and say, “hey, your liver and your kidney are really inflamed.” That little bit of information pissed me off quite a bit because I told them exactly what the problem was when I checked in. The proceeded to jack me full of Demerol and I drifted off to sleep for a few hours so all was forgiven.
I spent 8 hours getting tested the next day (again, this is like the tenth go around but it was the first time they gave me something like Demerol) and that was a whole different pain in the ass, but those few hours of drugged up sleep I got were the best I’ve ever had.
I have had blinding migraines; I’ve had to crawl to the bathroom because I couldn’t stand up and I’ve walked into walls thinking I was going through a door. I’ve wanted to kill the cat because he was stomping on the carpet and I couldn’t stand the noise it made; I’ve sobbed like a baby because of the pain. I do love me some Demerol.
I had forgotten the relief that follows being terribly seasick; a post up thread made me remember a time off the coast of Oregon; I would have hijacked the boat if I had had a gun. Of course, I was too damn sick to stand up and point the gun, so that is just hyperbole. I was sick until the moment the boat entered the breakwater between two jetties: the sickness was gone instantly. It was uncanny. By the time we docked, I was laughing about being seasick and checking out what fish the other people had caught. That was the only time I’ve ever been seasick; I hope it was the last.
Having the cast removed from my left leg and beinga ble to scratch that itch that had been driving me nuts for days.
Sweet, sweet bliss