Worst Pain?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Two gallstones blocking my bile duct plus infected gall bladder. My husband says he’s never seen me in so much pain. I also vomited 19 times as a fun bonus. Morphine couldn’t cut it.

They were on the fence about the MRI but they decided to do a hida scan, which is when they realized the reason there was no inflammation was that the tissue was dead and infected. I knew something was up when they went from “we’ll get you scheduled in a few weeks” to “sign these papers” and immediately carted me down the hall.

22

I had a laminectomy and spinal fusion a couple of years ago. There were some complications so they had to poke around for a couple hours longer than they thought. Due to same problems with my O2 levels they did not put me any pain medication before they woke me up. That was by far the most pain I’ve been in. I chased the pain for days without catching up. The first time they tried to get me up my BP dropped to 80/40 and I nearly passed out because of the pain and shock.

23

Ding ding ding, we have a winner. The pain is not to be believed. My ex went through that and childbirth, said the tooth was worse.

I’ve had a blood clot in my leg and herniated a disc in my back (five times!). Those weren’t even close.

24

I’m not sure you can fairly compare them, even on an individual subjective level. About half of women forget the pain of childbirth.

I’d be slow to trust in any woman’s recollection of how painful childbirth is compared to X. There are a lot of factors that contribute to how women remember labor pain. It’s a very different thing than having an unexpected injury or surgery or disease.

25

Kidney stone.

You know, sometimes folks use the phrase I Thought I Was Dying when they (a) don’t really mean it, but (b) were in a lot of pain; and, sometimes, folks use the word “literally” figuratively, for colorful emphasis.

I’m slowly and deliberately specifying that, no, I literally thought I was dying; there seemed to be no other reason for the pain, other than to signal that Oh, Hey: This Is A Condition That Will End Your Life; That’s What’s Happening Right Now; The Reason You Have Experienced Lesser Pains Before Now Was So You Could Put This In That Context, And Seek Immediate Help In This Emergency Or At Least Say Your Last Words.

26

This would be my answer as well. Those gallbladder stones blocking the bile duct hurt like a mofo. That was the worst pain I’ve ever had to this point. And I had to sit around at the hospital all day waiting to get an ultrasound and didn’t get rolled into surgery until late at night. Plus NO pain relief was given to me at all, I think because this was in the early 90s, when the medical world was determined not to give anyone morphine or even a Tylenol for fear of creating drug addiction problems. (Then later on apparently they swung too far the other way and created the current opioid epidemic, and now they’re swinging back toward “no pain relief for you” again.)

Ha ha, and then after surgery they kept encouraging me to press the button for pain relief! So strange. I guess you can’t get addicted AFTER surgery!!! My after-surgery pain was NOTHING compared to before. Ibuprofen was more than enough.

27

I’m in the emergency gall bladder surgery club too. It was mostly black and they said it was mere hours away from perforating. Definite pain winner so far.

28

Endoscopy with active colitis and no anaesthetic was special, but now you remind me, yeah, this is probably it. I was at college at the time, and not registered with a dentist in my Uni town. I remember going from dentist to dentist, begging to be treated.

(Weird aside: I eventually was taken in (poor waif) by a dentist, who sorted me out. Months later, when I had a minor dental problem, I thought to myself, I will go back to the dentist who helped me out, and register with them. They are good people. Result: Very puzzled looks and a receptionist telling me, No, this is a pediatric dental surgery, we certainly did not treat you. Goodbye. To this day I think they did treat me, but in truth the pain was so severe I may have hallucinated which surgery it was.)

j

29

I asked her for the comparison not long after my son was born. I’d say her memory was quite fresh.

30

Childbirth was NOT by any stretch the worst pain I have ever experienced.

There were these:

Whiplash was so bad, if someone had told be I was going to be in that much pain for the rest of my life, I would have killed myself.

Recovering from a tonsillectomy as an adult was horrible. However, I went from getting 2-3 viral upper respiratory infections a year, with total ear congestion, to getting no more ear congestion, and NO viral upper respiratory infections (a few nasty bacterial sinus infections, but antibiotics helped) until I had COVID, 20 years after the tonsillectomy; I also was able to fly again, after suffering for terrible headaches, and stopped ears that sometimes took days to unstop. I would have the surgery again. But MY GAWD, did recovery suck.

A weird skin infection in my leg that caused it to swell, and my foot to go numb, while the leg hurt so much, I had to crawl on my hands and knees to go up and down stairs, and it still made me cry.

Twisted gut. I ended up in the hospital having emergency surgery, and woke up with 23 staples up my abdomen, in LESS pain than I had been before the surgery. They told me if I had gone to the doctor a day later, I probably would have ended up with a colostomy.

Migraine headaches. If you’ve had one, you know. If you haven’t, let’s say, you think about banging your head against the wall, because they might feel better.

About all I have to say about childbirth was that it went on for 27 hours. But I had an epidural for most of it. It sucked, and the worst part was that after 27 hours, I still needed a c-section. F–K!

So while childbirth is not fun, I would go through it again before anything else listed here. Well, except the tonsillectomy. If my tonsils grew back after 22 years, I’d face the surgery again.

31

Another gall-bladder entry here, with a side of Pancreatitis.

Ibuprofen did nothing. Bacardi didn’t help. The kind of coke without the bubbles - nada.

I drove myself to the nearest hospital at 1AM, walked into the ER and the doctor did the “breathe out” while poking your stomach - the so-called “Murphy Sign” and shortly after a shot of morphine and that very much did the trick.

32

I’ve had terrible toothache.
I dropped a wooden chopping board onto my big toe once.
But neither of those compare to a bowel spasm. :cold_sweat:

33

I was going to say putting silver nitrate on a bad cut on my finger - yeow! I should have had something to bite down on.

But then I read all of the other posts you all made, and I count myself lucky.

34

My ovary burst open. That hurt pretty bad. The worst of it was when I’d lost quite a bit of blood and the spasms started.

Damn Charlie Horse in the middle of the night lately. Fucken hell those hurt.

35

I completely severed a hamstring tendon in a water-skiing mishap. The MRI showed a hematoma in the center of my thigh muscle the size of a sweet potato. That pain was far and away the worst I have ever experienced.

36

Have had my hands caught is a couple of places they shouldn’t which were highly unpleasant. There were parts of the incurring and rehab of knee reconstruction which weren’t fun.
Generally I’ve had a good run.

The question is; how do you measure pain.
Billy Connolly - Worst pain known to man

37

Ditto. Millions of tiny knives stabbing your joint every time it bends even slightly.

38

I had exactly the same experience in 2007 or so. Not even a Tylenol.

That said, I didn’t find the pain to be that bad. And it was a bad case, including the induced pancreatitis. But it wasn’t like the instant of pain after smashing your finger with a hammer. It was much less than that, but stretched out over hours. I guess the integral of the gallbladder pain was probably the worst I’ve experienced.

39

Kidney stones for me. I’ve had about a dozen of them. The first one, before I had a stock of pain killers on hand, was unbelievable. It’s the only time I’ve classified a pain as a “10”. The doctor who saw me said a kidney stone is the worst pain a person can have and survive.

40

Personally, an abscessed tooth. I almost fainted from the pain and really wished I had.

But kidney stones, by all accounts, is the worst. My dad has had gout and reports it is way up there.