I’m pretty sure I’ve seen key lime ice cream. And sherbet? Definitely.
During her first pregnancy, my SIL had horrible “morning” sickness and was skating on the knife edge of hyperemesis for a while there. One thing that consistently did not make her sick (until it finally did) was lime sherbet, and a particular store brand, so she shoveled it in as long as she could. After my niece was born, her gallbladder went kablooey and had to be removed, and when she had a much easier time with her second (planned, too) pregnancy, my dad was the first person who suggested that she probably had gallbladder issues long before she knew about them. We all agreed.
Back in my active practice days, we had a pale pink hydrocodone/acetaminophen liquid that doctors liked to use with tonsillectomy patients, because if the patient threw it up, they could see fresh blood in it. Gross, but true. Most of those concoctions were/are dark-red or purple.
I’ve never experienced really intractable pain, but one thing I always mention in these conversations that both men and women can experience was told to me by a woman who had two small children, and she said it was physical therapy after a 3rd-degree burn. The grafted area was on her hip, about the size of the palm of her hand, and she said, “I would rather have 20 babies in a row than go through anything like that again.”
Here’s an old painting called “The Gout.” My dad had two attacks, and he said this picture describes it quite well.
So I have a few and I’ll try to rank them from least worst to worst worst.
Drilling on my teeth without them being numb - I was maybe 15 at the time. I had a cavity and the dentist decided to fix it then. He gave me a shot of novocaine but didn’t wait for it to kick in and instead started drilling right away. I cried silently, gripping the chair with white knuckles until the hygienist finally asked me what was wrong. I told them I wasn’t numb. In a huff, he gave me another shot directly into my now exposed pulp, insult to injury. It gave me huge dental anxiety.
Trying to get an epidural but failing - I had to be induced with both my children. With my first, I labored happily for about 8 hours when I asked for an epidural at about 2 am. The anesthesiologist comes in and positions me and numbs me and then sticks the needle in my back and hits bone. Or something like that. I don’t really know what happened. All I really know is that it felt like I’d been struck by lightning down my right leg. He scolded me to sit still and tried again. Same thing happened. Third time, again. After that, I begged him to stop. He left in a huff. About 10 hours later, I’m at a really intense time, back labor, things hurt bad, and I’m begging for a c-section to make things stop. The doctor informs me that they’ll have to do an epidural if they do a c-section. I buckle down and try again. My daughter was born 4 hours later. Yes, that pain was worse than childbirth.
Abscessed teeth - in college, I woke up one day and two of my teeth hurt. But that was weird because these teeth had already been root canaled. As the day progressed, the pain got worse and worse until I was delirious with pain. I couldn’t do anything but be in pain. Breathing was a chore because it brought more pain. I went to the student health center, who sent me to a dentist. They gave me Vicodin, it did nothing. I begged for death. Finally, the antibiotics kicked in and I was miraculously fine. I didn’t actually get the teeth fixed/removed until 5 years later. Then I was actually mouth pain free. It was so amazing how much of a relief it was.
I thought about this, and I would have to say the pain from a herniated disk causing pain in my lower back, butt, and leg was horrific. I couldn’t sit, being in a car was torturous and sleeping was nearly nonexistent.
Tooth and mouth pain are also on the top,of my list.
I was stung by a box jellyfish when I was 10. I was mostly unconscious on the way to the hospital but still screamed most of the way according to my family members who were also in the car.
In my early 20s, I got sciatica from, of all things, doing sit-ups wrong. I would have shooting pain, either between my hip and knee, or knee to ankle, and telling the doctor that pretty much clinched the diagnosis. I never knew what would set it off or when. Thankfully, a few sessions of physical therapy and TIME healed it.
I’m going through another bout of sciatica now and it’s horrendous. This time I’ve got back spasms with it. My leg feels weaker this time and I’m having trouble walking because of that and the pain. It’s strange though because I think the pain was worse the last time. I can’t get into the doctor until October 8th, but I’m really hoping I can get an epidural scheduled for very soon after that.
Cheap chair in an office building’s cafeteria: metal frame, thinnish sheet of plastic forming the seat, bolted onto the chair legs.
While grabbing the seat to scoot it forward, I found that the front part of the seat was NOT fastened to the frame. My finger somehow slipped between the seat and the top of the leg… then I landed on it with my not-inconsiderable weight.
I think that’s the only time in my life I have ever nearly barfed from pain. Fortunately it was quite brief.
My first root canal. I’ve always been hard to get numb. Foolishly, I went into this without major drugs on board.
The first novocaine injection had me screaming in agony. The endodontist offered me a strong sedative (a benzo) if I could call someone to drive me home. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely punch in my husband’s phone number.
I continued with the procedure. That turns out to have been a major, major mistake. Multiple injections of anesthesia including some directly into the tooth. Getting yelled at for jumping in pain.
The sedative kicked in after he was done.
Childbirth sucked - induced labor, botched epidural (only time I screamed in pain was when the asshole anesthesiologist was ADMINISTERING the fucking epidural). So did the gallbladder (but not as bad as childbirth). But the two cited instances were likely the most severe.
The additional problem with mine was I’d get extremely nauseated. It would alternate with the pain. The pain would gradually ebb, and the nausea would rise. Then, the nausea would ebb (either with vomiting or not), and the pain would rise. I could go through those cycles for hours. Thank dog for triptans, although I didn’t get them until my migraines were starting to come farther apart and were a bit less severe.
I think memory tends to distort pain. I’m not sure which was the absolute worst, but two top contenders are:
Eye surgery, in particular one to replace the intra-ocular lens in the right eye. The surgery is usually a piece of cake because they slather your eye with numbing goop. The numbness wears off in 2 hours, which was plenty of time for the surgery…except the surgeon ran into a lot of scar tissue. The goop started wearing off about 30 minutes before he was through. I’d been sternly cautioned not to make a sound or move a muscle in my face. I thought, “They wouldn’t do this to Al Qaeda operatives.” At some point, I was beyond the ability to think, but I was still conscious. It was sheer hell.
Nobody said, “OK, you can talk now” or anything. They lifted the drapes from my face, and I heard the anesthesiologist gasp. This was not reassuring. Then I heard what sounded like a cow getting a rectal exam and realized it was me. They gave me something IV push. Sweet relief.
Another eye pain. Out of the blue, I developed severe endophthalmitis, an infection inside the eyeball. (I’d had eye surgery (not the one above) 6 weeks earlier, too distant for it to be the cause.) The vision was gone, and the eye was obviously very inflamed and painful. The doc gave me one numbing drop before giving me an antibiotic injection into the eyeball. It hurt so much, I couldn’t even scream. I very nearly passed out.
Miraculously, I eventually recovered all the vision I’d had before the infection.
Two incidents, both I’m sorry to say were more or less self-inflicted.
Managed to flip over the handlebars of a bicycle while going down a steep hill and removing largish patches of skin on one palm, forearm, shoulder and hip. It wasn’t too bad initially but after a few hours, and for about the next full day, it felt like someone was pressing red hot irons against my flesh.
I’ve never passed a kidney stone, but was fitted with an urethral catheter following an operation and had to use it for about two weeks. What follows involves genitalia, so I’m going to spoiler it in case it’s TMI. I was woken in the middle of the night about 5 days in by an incredible pain in my penis, caused by an involuntary erection - there was no lubrication to speak of between the rubbery plastic surface of the catheter and the very tender lining of my urethra, so the erection dragging the one against the other was very intense.
I say these were both self inflicted because I was goofing around on my bike at totally at fault for the resulting spill, and while the second case was the result of a perfectly normal male bodily occurrence, in this case, despite the pain my body kept trying to reach full extension.