Probably the aftermath of getting my wisdom teeth taken out.
Mine is pretty wussy compared to what I’ve read here, but…
I was raised on a farm and got hurt a LOT. Kicked in the groin by a cow being milked for the first time (and I’m a girl! You’ve no clue how I thanked my lucky stars for my lack of dangly bits); foot stomped by cows or horse; smashed into walls or stanchion dividers by unhappy cows; almost killed by a bull; run over by tractors. All of that (and more) and I’m still probably the least-injured farm kid ever.
When I was 17, though, I got into an argument with a cow. You’d have to know what the barn is like to understand, but the upshot is that 1/2" of steel scraped across my cornea, breaking one of the small bones around my eye in the process. I’m lucky to have my eye, let alone my sight. That injury took more than six months to heal and, to this day, if I’m tired or a bit tipsy I still see double.
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Dentist. Root canal. Started drilling, tooth wasn’t quite numb yet. I think I shrieked. It’s kinda blurry.
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Dropped a heavy wooden table on my big toe. Ow.
I’m surprised I stayed conscious for those, actually. I have very little pain tolerance, typically, and usually pass out if I’m in that much pain.
Ouch, these are awful! I keep reading them and remembering:
Root canal where novocaine didn’t work - check
Scratched cornea - check
Spinal fluid leak headache after epidural - check
Migraines - check (in fact, lots of checks for this one :()
Broken foot, fractured skull - check
Labor ending in C-Section - check
Okay, two new ones:
Having a fingernail partially removed without anesthetic to remove a splinter underneath, and
…the worst, because I actually passed out from the pain: after my C-Section they had to open me back up the next day. The anesthesiologist wanted to put some kind of sensors on my back and ordered me to sit up. I just had a C-Section (!), it just wasn’t possible to sit up which apparently pissed him off, so he impatiently shoved me into a seated position. Bye bye everything. I fainted and came to just in time to be put under.
Ah the memories.
There was this girl…
When I was 13, I needed scoliosis surgery. Because I have Spina Bifida, some of my vertabrae weren’t fully formed (hell, some might’ve been missing entirely). Hence, the docs needed to do a bone graft before they started to install the rods.
I went in for an eight hour surgery, during which they removed one of my right ribs & slapped the bone where they needed it. My mother said she nearly passed out when she saw me afterwards. I’d had somewhere in the neighborhood of nine major surgeries by that point, so you know she wasn’t a wuss.
When awake, I was in agonizing pain; my side was cut from a point about six inches above my pelvis up and around the bottom of my ribcage, ending at the middle of my back. That scar meets the vertical scar where they cut me to stick the rods in.
I was unconscious, actually, for much of the first couple days after the surgery. My face & body were swollen from all the anesthesia & trauma; I looked like Elvis in his later years, apparently. I was hooked to a ventilator, an NG tube & a jugular I.V. - I was knocked out with Demerol. I was in the P.I.C.U. for two weeks or so, then had the second eight hour surgery to get the rods installed. After that, I was in a regular room for another few weeks.
And a few years later, I found out that getting an I.V. drip of potassium burns like a mofo. Seriously - I was crying, it hurt so much. And getting blood taken from my femoral vein sucked horribly as well.
This doesn’t really stand up to most other people’s, (being that I am fairly young) but here it is. In the middle of an, ahem, informal wrestling match with my older brother, I tried to parry one of his kicks with my wrist, while I foolishly kept it limp.
I immediately grabbed my wrist and fell to the floor, scurrying, rolling, and generally puttering about on the carpet, laughing, and crying, and moaning from the pain. My face was all red, so was my wrist.
Anyway, it turned out to be a bruised muscle in my wrist. Coming very close to that was the time that a guy with Asberger’s syndrome on a sugar high in my class gave me a very, very exaggerated handshake, right after I got the injury. He was convinced that I was faking the injury. Oh, the joys of being in a “gifted” program.
Also - this is my first post. Hello, humans.
Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Boards, Gadfly.
Kidney stones? Painful. But they’re fairly low on my list.
- Dropping a piano on the fingers of my left hand.
- Awakening in a warm bath during shockwave lithotripsy to find the anaesthetic had worn off.
- Recuperation from liver transplant.
- Kidney stones.
- Bone marrow biopsy. I’ve never been in a procedure where the doctor closes the door to the exam room and says, “It’s okay if you scream while I do this.”
- Trans-metatarsal surgical amputation, left foot, after the nerve block wore off.
FISH
This is my first post…here goes!
A few months back i had pulled a muscle right beneath my ribcage. i also had a bad cough, which hurt the muscle. there were a few times where i coughed so violently i instantly dropped to the floor in pure agony, clutching my ribs. I thought my gut was going to bust open. sometimes it hurt just breathing too hard.
Once in a while i have a quick spasm of the muscles which control urinary flow or the closure of the urethra. imagine the muscles in that area feel like they are being clamped in a vise. it only lasts a split second but it is excruciating and scary.
Short term pain: playing hockey in HS and taking a slapshot to the ribs.
Long term: Dry sockets from wisdom tooth extraction.
Strep throat…my tonsils swoll together, and obstructed my breathing. It was scary, and hard really really bad. But, looking around, it wasn’t that big of a deal
Without a doubt–the 3 day long spinal headache that followed my myelogram. It was much worse than childbirth with no drugs.
My worst has to be a from a disease I caught while camping on a small island off the coast of Malaysia.
I never found out what it was. The locals said it was some sort of mosqueto-borne illness.
It was indescribably awful. Pains; headaches; fever; constant squirting of fluids out of both ends…
It lasted three days. If it had lasted four, I am convinced I would have died. By the third day, I was seeing things that weren’t there and lying in a puddle of my own filth. The locals did their best for me, feeding me soup and stuff - but what could they do?
The local doctor gave me pills, but as we had no language in common, and he wasn’t really a doctor anyway (more of an apothicary), I don’t know if they cured me or not.
Recovery was remarkably rapid - in a few days I was feeling fine. I never did find out what exactly it was.
This is weak, but putting full weight on a leg probably less than 45 minutes after putting an inch-long crack in my right hip… “the lateral of my right illeum” for the medically inclined.
–having my finger pinched off my hand by a heavy piece of steel when I was little
–being pulled to the ski patrol station swaddled up and stuffed into a sled after breaking my arm on my warm-up run of the day. I felt every bump all the way down the mountain.
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Migraines, the worst, by far. Not every time, but a few classic ones stand out in my memory as nearly unbearable, to the point where I questioned whether I really wanted to live through them.
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Smashing about an inch of my tibia with the footpeg of a motorcycle while in central america; then taking a taxi back to town (still unbandaged); then riding in the back of an open 4X4 up a mountainous road to the nearest “hospital”; then, the next morning, having to climb a flight of stairs while wearing a full backpack to get to the departure gate at the airport (no elevators in the building), all the while bleeding through the rather flimsy gauze which they used as casting material at the “hospital”; then having my leg re-set several times over the next few days once I was in a US hospital.
Cracked ribs…twice.
Had to sleep in a kitchen chair for a couple of weeks before I could even progress to lying back on the couch with only moderate pain.
Medically necessary circumcision at age 33. Had what my urologist called a tight foreskin (part of the foreskin was attached to the head of the penis). While he was in the neighborhood, I had him start out by giving me a vasectomy. Nothing is more fun then a month with 8 stitches in the head of your penis, 3 more in each side of your sac, and a raw area on the tip where the head was separated from the foreskin. The first three days, I slept (or passed out, if you prefer) a total of maybe 3 hours.
Peace-DESK
Who can say? I’ve had meningitis 5 times now (bacterial - the worse kind) and the pain is incredible… its pretty mind blowing thinking “I don’t care what happens just stop the fucking pain”.
After that, having brain surgery to fix some holes in my skull was pretty bad but not as bad as the meningitis pain…
However possibly the worse was due to the spinal fluid leak that I’d suffered (as it turned out) for over 3 years (constant headaches) which was cured by inserting a tube from my spinal column to my stomach - the first op didnt work so it had to be done again - the second one was a billion times worse than any pain I ever felt. I lost so much spinal fluid in the op that I couldn’t move for 10 days… and I mean moving my head 2 mm on the pillow had me bawling my eyes out… I couldn’t get up and try and wash (god I must have stank those 10 days!!!) until I’d had a full day’s huge painkillers in me… going for a wee was a killer (you don’t realise how many parts of your body are working together until one of them hurts… who’d have thought weeing would cause your head to hurt 10 times worse - doing anything else made me faint!!!).
I’ve not had a child yet (fingers crossed though) but I honestly can’t imagine its any worse than that pain… and I’ve lived through that, so I know that anything else won’t kill me lol…
Just a few of my least favorite moments-
Recovering from 2 myelograms performed a week apart. Spinal headaches for about 4 days each.
Ruptured lumbar disk for the past 17 years. Constant pain, 24/7.
Tendonitis in both knees aggrivated by degenerating cartilage. On a good day they both ache, on a bad one I can feel things grinding.
Needle biopsy on a thyroid growth performed with out any anasthetic. OK, Doc, just stick a big-ass needle in my throat.
Fracturing a bone in my hand during a fight, then slipping and falling a couple of weeks later and re-braking it.
Getting hit in the head with a baseball bat during a brawl. Was unconcious for about 3 hrs and had double vision for a week.
Possible TMI…wearing new loose boxers for the first time and sitting on a testicle…I am a very heavy man!
Lots more, these are just some of the good ones.