What's the most physicallly painful thing you've ever felt?

In My Humble Opinion
81

[nitpick]
If you’re referring to the SNL skits where the two guys would talk about weird and painful things they would do to themselves and then act like it happens all the time, that was Billy Crystal and Christopher Guest, not Jon Lovitz. :smiley:
[/nitpick]

I thought of another one, not as painful as before, but still hurt pretty well. I was camping with some friends at a farm in late January one year. We were goofing around by the pond. I walked onto the ice and got about 20 feet out before I broke through. I never thought of cold as being painful before that day, but being soaked in ice water made for a long walk back to camp as every blast of wind felt like razors cutting into me.

82

When I was born, I broke my collar bone because I came out so fast.

I was an extremley sick baby and had to have many surgeries. The doctors I had were the biggest morons and didn’t use pain killers because, get this, they believed that babies couldn’t feel pain. So my mom, who saved my life by researching and telling the doctors they were wrong, found me screaming/crying and clawing my stitches apart (they ran from my chest to my stomach, I had open heart surgery). I don’t remember it, but I’m sure it was pretty painful.

When I was one or two I fell off the baby meri-go-round at Chuck-E-Cheeses.

I still get them, but when I was younger I had some real doozies of leg cramps. I would wake up crying. Heh, my grandma certainly knows the Wrath of the Leg Cramp when I stayed over at her house that one time twelve years ago.

In elementary school, I was throwing a basketball towards the wall of the school and catching it. I threw too hard and it bent my ring finger back. I’ve sprained almost all my fingers one time or another, and my arm when I crashed my bike into the curb and landed on the arm without bending my arm (elbow locked).

Having braces is pretty painful, what with the pulling of the teeth and having the orthadontist tighting them. Luckily I had braces for only a year and a half. I had an underbite AND crooked teeth, so mine was really painful (I was fifteen/sixteen).

About a year ago, I think, I got the flu and I got this horrible ear infection. The pressure was so intense I thought my head was going to explode. I couldn’t sleep at night and I was actually crying. To this day, I think my hearing is a bit damanged. I have trouble, at times, hearing the volume of my own voice.

From,

Anake

83

The most physically painful thing I’ve ever felt was the truck that broke my femur. At some point a nurse asked if anything else hurt. I replied that my mouth hurt a little and I thought my shoulder was hurt. It turned out that I had three broken teeth and a separated shoulder. On the way in to set the bone and patch the artery, the doctor took out a thumb-sized piece of my quadricep that had been beaten away from the rest of the muscle.

84

Eeek. Easily the most horrifying thread I’ve read on this board.

My top four:

  1. Kidney stones, kidney stones, kidney stones. I’ve passed five over the past four years. Please, I promise I’ll be good, just don’t make me go through it again…

  2. Pain from impacted wisdom teeth/Post-op pain after having them removed. The dental surgeon basically shattered bone to get the lower ones out. For six months afterward, bone fragments would occasionally work their way out of my gums, often at awkward times. Great conversation starter at formal dinners.

  3. Broke both bones in lower left arm when I fell off the rings in seventh grade gym class. Gym teacher said, “now, when you are in this position, you should never let go…” I was not paying full attention, and let go.

  4. Sandwiched fingers of left hand between tile floor and bowling ball while playing catch with friend. Only what I deserved, I guess…

85

Giving birth to my stubborn child. She even refused to turn the right way for her own birth. Let me just say that as pleased as I am to have her in my life, it would have been polite for her to turn the way nature intended for the event which is not with shoulders laying across the narrow way.

A close second is spraining my ankle while doing the Timewarp. (That was way worse than giving birth the second time.) But maybe part of that was the humiliation of filling out the insurance forms. I don’t understand why the details were so important. I was at a wedding reception and twisted my ankle should be enough in my opinion. Did you know that intense, shooting pain gets worse while people are laughing at you?

86

Broken knee. Definitely.

September 22nd(a friday), I was riding my bike from work to home, was going too fast(I was going almost as fast as the cars beside me) and wasn’t paying attention(had a crappy day at work, you know, the kind that you tell yourself you shouldn’t have existed that day) and circumvented a car that was coming out of a parking alley(had to get off the boardwalk to do that), and tried to get on the boardwalk again, but noticed a tad too late that said boardwalk was now 1 foot high, so I crashed right in it. First thing that impacted was my face(all impact force on the boney structure under the eye; the impact was so fierce that my head bounced off), followed very quickly by my right shoulder and my knee that got stuck between my bike, the street and the side of the boardwalk. The first thing I did after impacting was to see if my face was alright. I was expecting a lot of blood, but, amazingly, I wasn’t even scratched. I picked myself up, and just then noticed that my right knee wasn’t alright. It moved, well, awkwardly. I thought it was dislocated(oh yeah, my hands were bleeding, but that was superficial damage). So I walked on my broken knee to my bike, lifted it up, turned it around, and rode it back to my workplace to call my mother(walking on my knee which made a kind of weird crunching feeling), who was at home. I finally sat down, and 5 mins later my mom arrived, and that’s when it started to hurt really bad(the knee is very compact, and it leaves no space for swelling, let alone some for the internal bleeding). So I went to the hospital, waited 3 hours in the ER, with my knee all swelled up(at the very least double in size, maybe triple. That tells you how much free blood and swelling there was in there). It hurt. REALLY bad. The kind of pain that made me shake uncontrollably. After they examined me(making me do all sorts of excrutiatingly painful movements), they proceeded to remove the blood that was in the knee. They must’ve gotten out at least half a liter of blood out of there. The relief that was! (along with the morphine they injected me :)) Then it was 1 month with a cast, and then 3 weeks of recovery. Pile that with permanent damage(stretched tendon; it heals in a relaxed state, so it will stay “slack”). Add a total muscular atrophy which will take months to rebuild, and roughly, that was the last 3 months of my life. I certainly hope that the next ones will be better :smiley:

Sorry for the long post, but I felt it was necessary to include all the details :wink:

87

sigh So true, Uni, so true…

88

EEeaaghh!! GGgkkkK!!! Why are you making me read all these things? WHY?

I’m sitting here cringing and wiggling in my chair, my fingers and toes dancing every which way… and yet, I CAN’T STOP! You people are like one huge sick Stephen King novel.

Well, just for the hell of it… {{Injured Dopers}}

I’m not even going to bother trying to compete here. Childhood scrapes and head bonks just don’t seem to measure up. I guess I’ve been really, really lucky.

  • Dave
89

I’d say mine was when I was ten or so and hit a large bump in the road with my bike. The bike basically stopped and I went flying through the air and landed on the concrete right on the top of my head (fortunately I was wearing a helmet) and flipped over a couple times, not breaking anything but in extreme pain and scraping off a lot of skin on my face and limbs. Lots of blood and it hurt to move at all for the rest of the day. The helmet broke completely in half.

Second was around age twelve when I was doing backflips off the high dive at the aquatic center. After a few of those I decided to try doing two flips on my way down. Then I decided to try three. I did two and a half and landed on my back. As soon as I hit the water, my arms and legs stopped moving and I just sort of sank to the bottom of the pool. I managed to make my way back to the surface to see the lifeguards laughing at me. I pulled myself out and just lay there next to the pool for about ten minutes before I could limp to a chair.

I guess these don’t really compare to most of the other experiences in this thread though. :rolleyes:

90

I have two:

I had several ear surguries when I was 4 to correct conductive deafness and a tilted eardrum. I can hear now! This has also caused a problem of me getting ear infection on a yearly to bi-yearly basis. I feel it start around 9:00pm one night, and by 2:00 am I’m on my way to the ER to have my ear punctured or drained. It never has happened during the day. I’m usually in tears and can’t open my eyes or lift my head off of who ever’s lap I’m laying on. Myhusband has gotten used to these rituals.

Th other was my first sinus headache. I had never had one before so I thought it was a regular headache. That was until I was writhing on my bed, tears streaming down my face, and clutching my head in agony. My husband finally picked me up, stipped me down and stood in a hot shower with me for 45 minutes. He then put me in bed and I slept for 5 hours in the middle of the afternoon. The whole time he was swathing my head with hot-wet towels.
That was pain.

91

Junior year I got an ear infection something fierce. Both eardrums ruptured twice in one night. And as others have said, it actually feels good after they rupture.

I then got to go home for vacation by flying. I chose it because if I got an ear ache on the train I would have wanted to van Gogh myself.

On the plane . . . I won’t discuss. I don’t actually remember it.

But when I got home . . . hooooooooo boy. I had ear drops several times a day. I had a wick put in my ear to get the drops in that far.

Evidently I wasn’t getting the proper dosage, because after a few days my ears started hurting. Again. Worse than before. I was writhing on the floor trying to do anything to distract myself from the pain of my ears.

A few days later I got my ears flushed out with warm water. All kinds of colors of things in there. No wonder my ears felt so bad, the junk that came out.

92

Well, I have 3. All hurt a lot. The funny thing about pain is afterwards, you remember that it hurt, but you can’t really remember the feeling of hurt, thank god.

#1 At about age 12 I had 1st and 2nd degree burns over my entire face cuz I thought it would be neat to light some gunpowder on fire. For the full story, see the “stupidest thing you ever did” thread in MPSIMS.

#2 Having a root canal as a teenager. The nerve could not be completely numbed from the side, and the Dentist wound up having to stick the needle right into the nerve. Blinding pain! For about 2 seconds only, thank god. If he hadn’t put a little rubber chock in my mouth, I would have bitten right through the needle.

#3 At age 30, I went skateboarding like I used to do all the time as a teenager. I’m thinking, “This is fun! Why did I ever stop?” Then I kicked out doing a 50/50 grind on the coaping at the top of a 1/2 pipe, and landed on the bottom, on my hand. Drove the bone in my elbow out of the socket, so I had a broken AND dislocated elbow. Had to wait about 2 hours at the ER with no medication. When they finally did give it to me, the relief was instant and wonderful. They popped the elbow back in, and said “Do it again”. I was flying, I tell ya! The physical therapy afterwards was no fun either, but at least I got full use of my arm back.

93

DOH! In my lst post, the Docs didn’t say “do it again” after poping my elbow back, I did. That would be an unusually cruel doctor!

94

I guess I’m a light weight here.

Had a bad tooth the dentist had to pull, but discovered that 1), Novocain did not work on it and 2), nitrous oxide does absolutely nothing for me, so he asked if he could try just yanking it out? Stupidly, I agreed. I never realized just how tough those pre-anasthetic dental patients had to be. After a few tugs that nearly ripped my jaw off, I had enough of this whole new level of pain and had him stop.

Then I recalled a numbing procedure a previous dentist used on a stubborn tooth, a ligamental block, and suggested it to him. It’s Novocain right in the nerves on either side of the tooth and it lasts like 3 minutes. He used it and out came the tooth!

He slightly broke the socket in the process. The next and worse pain arrived hours later after the tons of Novocain wore off and my jaw felt like it was flayed open and filled with salt. A few thousand milligrams of Excedrine did nothing. Beating my head against the wall helped for a few seconds, but I actually wound up pacing around my house and moaning, my entire existence focused on my jaw, debating if it would be less painful to take my gun and shoot it off. I got the dentist on the phone at home, my room mate went out and got the new pills for me - not daring to protest over being dragged awake by me clawing his bedroom door open and looming over him, bug eye’d, slavering, with pain twisted features and asking him to go get the medication in a muffled, inhuman scream.

When I got these tiny, white pills, whose name I have forgotten, I was sweaty, trembling, my heart rate was up and I was considering knocking myself out with a hammer. I took one, and 20 minutes later ---------- ahhhhhh! No pain! A wonderful, slightly drunk, slightly floating sensation and I felt great.

Actually, they made me feel so good, I’d like to get more of them today!

I used them for two days before the jaw finally settled down.

95

I know how you feel, ren. I had really horrible pain in my back about two months ago, so bad that I could barely walk some days. My chiropractor sent me to get an MRI. It turned out that I had three degenerating and herniated discs in my back. I couldn’t even lie down without being in pain. It took weeks for me to feel better again.

The upside to this is that when I go home, my family insists on lifting and carrying things for me so I don’t hurt my back again.

96

I have bilateral patellar dislocation which means that my knees dislocate (and re-locate) themselves fairly regularly. I have gotten used to this pain.

Pleurisy rates way up there, this is an inflammation of the outer surface of your lungs so you can’t breathe without “excrutiating I wish I was dead” pain. My doctor and mother said that if you have had severe pleurisy a man can feel pain equivalent to giving birth. My mom has had severe pleurisy and given birth to four kids and said she preferred childbirth.

97

Some of you people mention drilling a cavity here.
It’s funny, but when I get my cavities drilled, the pain momentarily increases to quite a nasty level, but then my sense of balance, of all things, does a flip-flop and I can pretty much ignore the pain (it still know it hurts like hell, but I’m not in much agony).
I’ve no idea why it happens.

Still got a fear of dentists from my childhood accident, though…:frowning:

98

And THAT is one HELL of a husband! He’s definitely a keeper, Tubagirl!

99

Dropped an iron skillet on my baby toe. It was one of those moments when you can’t even scream because you are just so shocked at the incredible rush of unexpected pain.

The worse prolonged pain was when I was burned by cleaning a burners on the stove…about thirty seconds after I had turned the damn thing off. The burns left rings on my palms - just like a grilled steak. The throbbing in my hand lasted for days.

100

I don’t anywhere near compare to the pain stories of you guys.

My most painful incidents happen just about every month. Yeah, you guessed it: cramps. Usually I fill myself with prescription medecine and stay in bed all day. Before I was doping myself up, I’d be throwing up, writhing and crying all day long. Goodness, it’s fun being a woman.

Other than that, I’ve broken two toes, but after that 30 second “OW!” it wasn’t that bad.