Oh yeah, maybe I shouldn’t tell other people’s stories, but…
My brother in law is a vet assistant/ranch hand and lives in the country. Last year, he was driving home from a friend’s house. He crested a ridge, and “the road disappeared.” There was an unmarked junction on the other side of the hill; the truck went airborne, and crashed into a ditch at 55MPH. There was a house one hundred yards away, so he spent the next four hours crawling through corn stubble with a broken back and eye socket, blacking out every few minutes (geez, do we all black out on fifteen minute intervals at these times?) Once he woke up the folks in the house (who knew him but didn’t recognize him), he got a helicopter ride the rest of the way to the hospital. A week later, they did a second surgery to rebreak the eye socket and reshape it.
Shortly after he got out of his truss, he was working a horse and got behind it. It kicked and broke (bent) his lower leg. As you might have guessed, the response at the hospital was one of “you again???”
Several people have complained in this thread about doctors who say “This won’t hurt a bit” or “This may sting a little” before performing some excruciatingly painful procedure. A few years ago, I had to have a big, disgusting wart cut off the side of my foot. Before injecting the anesthetic, my podiatrist said, in a rather thick drawl, “I ain’t gonna lie to ya, this is gonna hurt like hell.” I turned white, because doctors always seem to expect a high tolerance for pain from their patients, and here’s a guy saying it’s going to hurt like hell!
So he gets out this enormous fucking needle, inserts it into my foot, and starts that “hunting around” crap they do to get the anesthetic all spread out. The needle stick hurt a lot, and the anesthetic caused sort of a burning sensation as it flowed into the tissues, but it was far from the most painful thing I’ve felt. Much less painful than, for instance, a bad sunburn.
Anyway, the message I’m trying to get across is that no matter what the doctor says before he does a procedure, you’re going to dread it. I think they should just say what they’re going to do and leave it at that.
This is going to sound strange but I have had some of these experiences before: sciatica, slipped disc, broken bones, dislocations (arms, ankles, knees), stitches, migraines and yet, the absolute worst pain I have ever endured is having an infected ingrown toenail. I have lost consciousness from the pain of someone accidentally bumping it. Lamaze breathing was recommneded but it doesn’t help. The times that I did not pass out from the pain, I had to resort to meditation to keep from losing it. The solution is to have the toenail surgically removed, which is not a problem. What is a problem is that this is a recurring event. I have repeatedly requested the amputation of the entire toe but my doctor thinks I’m kidding.
I have two. The first: having the corner of a music stand slice through my upper lip and slam into my gum at about 50 mph (estimate of others in the room). Thank God the pain only lasted for a few seconds, while the nerve didn’t realize that it had been sawn in two. Then, about 90 minutes later, ending up in a plastic surgeon’s office and having anesthetic injected into the bone of my upper jaw. GAAAAAH! After all that, having 14 stitches (7 on the outside, 7 on the inside) all pulling my lip tight and itching like crazy, and scratching my upper gums.
The second: I have bad cramps to begin with. But last year, right before finals, stress and an attack of chills did me in. I got down off my top bunk to grab the bottle of ibuprofen when I had to double over and fall on the rug. I felt nauseated but couldn’t stand up to get to the bathroom, and it was everything I could do just to grab the phone to call my mom after midnight for the first time in my life. My roommate slept through most of it, then sat up and wanted to know who the hell had been whimpering. The Advil didn’t even kick in for another 15 minutes 