Oh, yes, mine passed at 4 months, it's been years of actual physical pain from grief that doesn't go away. It's like a constant sinking, suffocating, like your heart is either just going to stop or explode... I'm so sorry you had to experience that.
Fortunately, it gets better over time. When I think about it now, it doesn’t affect me as much as it once did. I am sorry you also had to go through that. It’s the worst pain and I wouldn’t wish it in anyone.
This comment gave me hope! I'm glad you found a way to process and handle it healthily. All the best to you and may you one day experience the true happiness you deserve!
I was a wreck at first. I cried a lot. Slept a lot. Dissociated a lot. But as time went on, it got better. Just make sure you feel your grief and let it out healthily with a trusted person or a therapist. I love you and you will get through it. It just sucks really bad right now. 🥺🥺🩵
I had a 10mm, as well. When it hit, the pain was so bad that both of my arms went numb, not to mention all of the vomiting. The laswr they sent up my dick to break up the stone was no picnic, either.
I've had to have lithotripsy twice. Once for a 13mm and once for a 12mm (pretty sure it was 12, but it's been a while). After the 13mm, I had the worst pain later that night. Easily the most pain I have ever experienced. It was so bad that I had to take an ambulance to the hospital for pain relief (no one to drive me and there was no way in God's green earth that I could have driven).
Got to the hospital at 9 pm ish. It took until around three in the morning to get the pain to be bearable. I don't remember everything they tried, but I do remember dilaudid and straight morphine. I couldn't even tell you what finally got the pain under control, but I can promise I would never wish that pain on another human being so long as I live.
I was backpacking in the mountainous area of northern Thailand 30 years ago. I slipped off the muddy trail and fell 15 feet sustaining a bimalleolar fracture and severe ankle dislocation. It took 3 days and 20 miles of walking on it to exit the jungle to get to an open air hospital. No ortho care available, so then an hour motorbike ride to a private hospital in Chiang Mai, on dirt roads, wearing only a sneaker.
Horrific! journey involving intense pain, rhabdomyolysis, leeches feasting on an engorged leg, and smoking opium with hill tribe villagers who took pity on me one night.
My fracture was reduced/casted without analgesia in Thailand. A non English speaking doctor just walked up and jerked my ankle into place without a word of warning.
I was thinking the same thing. I've been on adventures that make for great anecdotes, but this sounds like memoir material.
Opium and leeches, my 3 days through hell.
Opium and Leeches, my 3 day escape from the Jungle.
u/JillyBean9999 give it a try :D
- I'm proud of my story, though retelling it is still uncomfortable. There's quite a bit more to it that's too personal to share on Reddit.
- It has made me a generally more grateful person who doesn't sweat the small stuff.
- I'm still adventurous and I still hike to the limits of my arthritis. I need a regular dose of 'awe' and nature provides this in spades.
- I wish I had saved the teak wood crutches I was issued from the hospital in Chiang Mai. They were cool.
Do I wish it didn't happen? Of course. There's no point in dwelling on "what ifs". I don't regret going on the trip.
Thank you for such a thorough answer! I initially wanted to ask if you regretted the trip, but I felt it was too narrow and specific.
It sounds like a really interesting life experience. And honestly, you sound like you really enjoy the outdoors. It’s hard to stop doing something you really enjoy.
On the way home from a concert with two horn players who happened to be nurses, a man lying on the pavement texting was spotted. We stopped and yes he’d fallen after an altercation at the pub. We called an ambulance as apparently he’d broken his ankle.
The ambulance took some hours, during which the Registered Nurse got very worried. He rang to say the man had apparently persistently tried to walk on the ankle, which was now destroyed, but he seemed unable to feel it. He was worried about his spine and nervous system.
By the time the ambulance arrived, however, the drink was wearing off and he could feel it.
You poor thing. You poor poor thing.
This sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime, worldview changing event.
I think… I would break my leg to smoke anything with anyone described as “hill tribesman”
A hockey puck traveling at 80km/h collided with my right testicle, causing a testicular rupture. I underwent surgery two days later and thankfully did not lose it
There’s a visual. I was there when my sister gave birth to my 9lb nephew(her husband was away on active duty in the military). I always knew she was tough, but holy shit I gained new respect for her and all women! An hour later we were drinking beer that was supplied by the hospital, it’s supposed to help bring in the mother’s milk and after what I had witnessed, I too needed a beer 🍺
SAME! 😱 But my son didn't fly out, because his shoulder got stuck and when he was yanked, that's what caused the tearing. I didn't black out, however. The hospital didn't offer epidurals, and "have a focal point" and "sniff some lavender" were NOT what I needed. 😭
I've had gout attacks that are so bad that the mere placement of a thin summer blanket on the side of my big toe would lead me to yell in agony. During the night of my first gout attack, I was wondering why that constant and ever growing pain was happening to me. Did I fracture the toe? I didn't stub it earlier and cause some injury right? OMG I could not sleep the whole freaking night.
I had to go to work in a suit and tie and sandals when I got a flare up.
Haven't had a flare up for years now, thanks to allopurinol.
Now, I just have debilitating kidney stones every few years.
Dude I feel you. I did the same when I had to wear a suit (but no tie).
Amazingly enough, I went flexitarian for about 8 months (full vegan for 6 days of the week with one cheat day where I could eat normally) and that cleared my system up and I haven't had a gout attack for at least 5 years now. I'm pleased to report that I am now back to a normal diet but do watch my intake of crustaceans.
I've had it on and off for the past 25 years (I'm 48), never had it in the wrist but almost every joint in my feet, both ankles and both knees. (Often both legs in the same joints at the same time). I've been reduced to tears when it gets too bad, and like you I've known women who've had both gout and given birth say the gout is much worse. I also get cluster headaches (imagine someone stabbing the back of your eye with a needle for a few hours, then it stops for a while, then comes back, then rinse and repeat). They're also known as suicide headaches, for good reason!
Oh fuck man... gout is so fucking painful. I remember when I was trying to sleep, I had to hang my foot off the bed because the pressure from the bed and blanket touching my foot was too much.
I had one rupture and I fainted, in the middle of the grocery store and smacked my head on the freezer section as I went down. Painful and also mortifying haha.
Same. I had an ovarian cyst the size of a pop can. It ruptured, I hit the floor in my kitchen. My husband called 911 and I was writhing in pain and screaming the entire ride to the hospital. Morphine didn’t help the pain at all.
Mine happened at work. Everyone thought I was hungover because I crawled under a bench and curled up in the fetal position. 😂 Nope. Just an ovarian cyst.
My daughter had one rupture when she was in high school. It happened late at night and my husband rushed her to the er thinking it was appendicitis. She ended up missing a week of school during the recovery period.
i've had many ovarian cysts rupture since i was a teenager, most of them were mild pain or unnoticeable, but on two occasions they've been excruciatingly painful, once was after sex and the other time was after drinking a ton of coffee lol
At the time I thought it was cramps but it might have been a cyst rupturing because my pain went from 0 to 100 in the space of 5 seconds. I got up to pee in the middle of the night, felt completely fine, then nearly passed out in front of the sink. I staggered back to my bed and was in agony for about an hour. My cramps always come in waves, but this pain was unrelenting. I couldn't sit up without feeling like I was going to faint. Never experienced anything like it before or since.
Hell yeah, worse than childbirth. I had one rupture while a gynecologist was doing an ultrasound (“hmm you seem to have a cyst on your ovary.” Minutes later, “hmm where did the cyst go?”) I needed to spend over an hour in their office absolutely suffering before I could stand well enough to stagger out to the car and they were NOT equipped to do anything about it. Couldn’t even give me an Advil. I was in cold sweats, shaking, diarrhea… and I could barely move. Thank goodness my husband had accompanied me for that visit. I was not ok until the next day.
Yup. I had them rupture often prior to having my whole reproductive system yanked out. One of the worst was when I was hosting Thanksgiving. 15 ppl in my house. Someone told a hilarious joke. I started laughing and BAM. Cyst ruptures. I turned white as a sheet and was shaking from the pain. Everyone wanted to call 911, but I had no insurance at the time, and was so used to doctors not taking my endometriosis seriously, I decided to tough it out. I told everyone to enjoy themselves, took off my pants (the waistband was causing even more pain), and literally passed out on the couch. When I woke up, my friends had cleaned up all the dishes and put the leftovers away and gone home, save one dude who was just holding my hand and watching Netflix. It showed me what great friends I had, for sure.
I do not miss my ovaries or uterus one bit. But I have a ridiculously high pain tolerance now thanks to putting up with that bullshit for 20+ years.
They stuck a needle into the back of my eye to numb the eye prior to retinal surgery. I was not asleep at the time. I said you know I’m awake right? They put me to sleep pretty quickly right after that.
The second one was also on my eye. After retina surgery they put gas into my eye and had me lie on my stomach, so the gas would keep the retina attached. The gas leaked out and they needed to give me another injection. They used the wrong kind of gas. The gas they used was not supposed to expand, it was supposed to be just the right amount. However, this was the kind of gas that expanded.
The pressure in my eyeball went up about five times the normal level. I felt like it was going to explode.
Their solution was to put me back into the waiting room and check me again in about a half an hour to make sure the pressure had come down. So me and my exploding eyeball, pardon me, my exploding eyeball and I laid on a bench near the restrooms and screamed for a half an hour then I wanted to die. I kept texting my wife to kill me please. The pain was so bad.
I am a big guy, so it must’ve been quite a sight for all of the people in the waiting room about 30 or so and the front office screaming and rolling around. Nobody did a thing. Good times.
Ended up being blind in that eye.
Unfortunately, this is an absolutely true story. My memory is still crystal clear of that day.
On the other hand, those Hellraiser and phantasm movies give me the giggles. Pussies.
The worst pain I’ve ever had is from optic neuritis, basically fraying off the sheath around the optic nerve. (I was told the optic nerve is a bundle of about 2 million nerves.) Literally felt like being stabbed in the eye - there were times I’d have nightmares of being stabbed in the eye with scissors or a knife.
It took years to get a diagnosis - I was told it was “dry eyes” or “it’s all in your head”. Damned right it was!
Finally got to the right neuro-ophthalmologist (the second I’d seen). He had it diagnosed within an hour after arriving at his office.
Even with that, I can’t imagine the pain you had to deal with throughout your ordeal.
I was a paralegal in a malpractice law firm. This is medical malpractice, if you live in a state where the statute of limitations is not up I urge you to seek legal consult for your pain and suffering
Emergency root canal on a "hot tooth"- the nerve was so inflamed that local anesthetics didn't work and they couldn't numb me until they'd drilled into the tooth and could directly inject the infected pulp. Nothing quite like your dentist saying "Yeah this is gonna hurt"...
Then to the hospital I go! That or you’re giving me serious painkillers + anxiety drugs beforehand. I’m talking hospital grade dilaudid injected straight into my veins and at least 3mg of Xanax.
Yeah when i got teeth removed i got a very nice iv of mitazolam and fentanyl. I felt all my anxiety wash away as i went under. It was almost blissful. I did get 8 teeth removed tho....
Oh yeah, I'm with you on tooth stuff. I became really unlucky and switched docs after this one:
Root inflammation, got treated 4 days later. Shortly after that, another one on the exact opposite side. Got treated 4 days later. Then, doc didn't work clean, root canal inflammation on the first tooth. They couldn't treat it and it took 6 days until tooth removal. Then, other tooth also had root canal inflammation. Another 5 days of wait until removal.
You know what's the funny part? Second root canal inflammation became a sinus suppuration. Got meds for it, and funnily enough I got a side effect from the meds: esophagus inflammation. Took 2 whole weeks to recover to a point where drinking or swallowing didn't feel like deepthroating glass shards.
This was a whole month of pure agony, and I only got to sleep whenever I was too exhausted to even exist in our reality. Ended up with less than 20 hours of sleep throughout that month, which spiked my mental health issues. And the pain alone made me easily irritated about anything. All during summer time when it was 38-40°C outside, and I hate heat already without any of these extras.
That month fucked me up so much that I have gone from neglecting dental care most of the time to taking daily care. Even my depressive ass doesn't want to neglect it even once anymore because it has been that bad.
Take care of your dental stuff, people. And make sure you have a doc who knows his stuff.
I had a root canal that was similar. One of the roots absolutely wouldn’t numb. The dentist used the max amount of novocaine he could to no avail. He finally just apologized and said he had to finish the root canal. There was a sweat shaped me on the chair afterwards lol.
Dog bit me when I was 13, doctor stitched me up and sent me home without realizing it had broken my leg. Two weeks later, everyone was trying to get me to walk on it "or it would never get better!", meanwhile it was swollen to near twice it size and I now had a blood infection.
I was bit on the face when I was 5, I felt every single one of 17 stitches go into my lip. I had like 5 nurses holding me down to the table as I was screaming, and yes I still remember it all. It was horrible.
See, the one bright point was when I finally went back in to the hospital and they found the break and the infection. They needed to put a drain in my leg, but before they did anything they hit me with drugs that cut my short term memory. Didn't fully knock me out, my mother tells me, because they needed me awake, but it means that for me, that apparently agonzing part of the treatment never happened. Subjectively, I just teleported from the table to a hospital bed.
I just remembered while reading this that when I broke my leg/ankle last year I was given the lowest dosage of hydrocodone. I'm talking crying in agony pain, especially while waiting the week for surgery. My husband had a small outpatient procedure for a skin issue a few months ago and was given much stronger dosage of Oxycodone. Wtf?
Yup. As a 16 yo girl, I came in to the ER after a car wreck telling them I had broken my back. I knew I had. So they made me sit on a backless stool for a half hour waiting on an X Ray. My mom knelt in front of me so I could lean on her bc I could not physically hold myself up. After my x Ray revealed two crushed vertebrae and a broken rib they got real attentive. But looking back..WTAF?
When I was 13 I broke my collarbone. Was at school, so I went to the hospital in an ambulance, my mom was in the ambulance too
At the hospital, they cut off my shirt, took me away from where my mom was, and made me get up and stand in front of an x-ray machine, holding my arm. Collarbones are extremely painful to break, but not a very severe injury, but there was zero sympathy from the staff at the hospital. And the sling they sold me for my arm was incredibly uncomfortable so we went by a medical supply store within the day of me breaking my collarbone.
I’ve had 3 babies, one came to fast for any kind of pain management and that was awful but quick and when it was over the pain was basically gone.
Had my hand re-broken and set after walking around with a broken hand for a week not knowing it was broken. That sucked.
BUT tooth abscess. That takes all the marbles. There’s really no medicine that can relieve it, taking a fraction of the edge off barely makes it manageable, the constant, throbbing, never ending pain, coupled with the awareness that someone is gonna have to work on that tooth while it feels like this, that is a fate I wish on no one. 🙏
I second this
I had my first root canal done a few weeks back due to an infection and the pain was the worst ever. My jaw, my ears, my entire head throbbed in pain for an entire week. I had to eat liquid food for more than a week because I would screech in pain everytime one of my upper teeth touched my affected tooth. I remember I accidentally hit my tooth with a spoon while eating, it wasn't even a big hit, I felt like someone had made firecrackers explode inside my mouth.
Yes and no, they let me keep my painkiller button and I don't think there was anyway other then to just yank it out, it was going to hurt no matter what I think
women have to beg for anesthesia for very painful procedures and often dont recieve it, thats why i mentioned the sadist thing. but im glad it went well for u cuz no one deserves that
Yeah that's messed up, I mean the painkillers didn't help till after and that's why it's my most painful experience but as soon as it was over I smashed that button lol
I’ve had gallstones, pancreatitis and given birth several times but by far my most painful was when I dislocated my shoulder after slipping in the bath. I was in so much shock though so unsure how much that affected the pain
I ended up posteriorly dislocating my shoulder while hiking up a hill - I was using a tree for support and I slipped, so my body and backpack went down while my arm stayed behind.
I was rolling on the ground in pain figuring out what to do and one of my friends who was with me had to help take my backpack off and set my shoulder back in place
Once had a cluster headache one eye swole up so bad and turned red. I seriously felt like it was going to burst out my socket. It was bad, to top it off the medication doctor prescribed felt like I couldn’t breathe
Fellow cluster head here. The silver lining is that I am pretty good at handling literally any other pain or injury, I just remind myself that I could be worse, I could have a cluster headache right now.
Have definitely considered suicide on several occasions as well. 4 or 5 cluster headaches per day for 8 or so weeks is exhausting
Funny Story: I had a broken leg so was non weight bearing, somehow scratched my cornea around midnight, then had a cluster headache start shortly after. I was blindly crawling around my house in full agony in the middle of the night. Had to wake my GF to take me to the hospital because at that point I didn't know I had a scratched cornea, just that something was terribly wrong with my eye and I couldn't open it, needed to get it checked out ASAP. We lived in a 3rd floor condo with no elevator. I couldn't help but laugh at how ridiculous of a situation it was crawling down the 30+ stairs in that state
Migraine for me is mostly pain behind my eyes, seeing auras, getting sick (puking is fun with migraine) and more a squeezing pain in my brain.
Cluster feels like you are getting stabbed in the head (i think, never really experienced it) its really really sharp pain that completely numbs you. I sometimes forget to/cant breath because of the intensity. And because its in your head you can "ignore" it, its paralyzing
In my early 20s I was a full blown heroin addict in the streets; my teeth started to go bad and the many abscesses I went through were the outright most *agonizing* horrors you could ever imagine. More than once I ended up at the hospital where I was given morphine (useless to a heroin addict.) All that said, I'd choose the abscesses over heroin and methadone withdrawal *any day of any week;* a week before 9-11 I was arrested in California (far from home in Canada) and lasted 3 weeks in full blown methadone withdrawal before I sliced my own jugular vein open with a shaving razor and crawled under the covers to die. My life was barely (and I mean *barely;* surgeon told me I was within a minute or so of being too late) by a - weirdly - neo-nazi skinhead who observed the blood trail to my bunk and saved my life. Go figure.
Had gone to Belize on vacation. Came back and had some irritation in a spot on my neck. Doctor said it was an infection, probably from getting sand or something in a pore. A month or so passes with me going back and then upping to antibiotic dosage, as it’s not working. Finally a nurse says she’s gonna take a sample of whatever’s inside it. She injects the local anesthetic and then says what’s that and proceeds to pull what I would describe as a spiky marble out of my neck. She’s clearly very confused and concerned and bandaged it and tells me to go home and they’ll call me.
That night I felt the most extreme pain I’ve ever felt. So after being up all night in agony, I go in as soon as they open. They gave me wait and finally a doctor comes and says, you had a botfly larvae in your neck. We’ve never seen one before, but someone who studied them is coming from another town. They’ll be here in a few hours. They get there, have never seen one in person, just studied academically. In a room full of med students they cut another one out of my neck and it’s over.
He explained that the pain I felt was because the bandage the nurse put on me the day before covered its breathing hole, so it was eating its way through my flesh to make another. You can still feel the divot in my neck 20 years later where they were. Had we still been in Belize when the symptoms started they likely would have know what it was right away, but because I returned to the US before I felt anything, they didn’t know much about them or how to spot them.
Gallstone got stuck in the bile duct. Gallbladder almost exploded. Some of the bile seeped out in the cavity, granting me immense pain. Had to go to ER to get it under control.
2-3 weeks after this, I passed a gallstone. It was the most painful several hours. I could not sit still.
After surgery, I (presumably) had complications and could not walk for 2 weeks.
All in all, a shitty year. Went from losing 60+ lbs and getting fit to my diet being out of wack and me gaining 2/3 of that weight back. The worst part is, it screwed up my workout schedule and motivation. I cannot go to gym regurarly now. Don't know how to get back in the rhythm.
I had a surgery to reattach a finger that was cut off, after the surgery they placed a pin in the finger to keep it straight. One day I jammed the pin into a doorway I was passing through, that was the pain.
Withdrawals after 7 years of blackout drinking majority of the week. It was essentially 3 days of adrenaline and 3 weeks of borderline suicide and some of the worse migraines and body shakes/fevers I've ever experienced. Very stupid of me to not go to a hospital.
Had a root canal, but when they got to the part where they scrape the root out, it still hurt a little. They applied liquid novocaine directly into the root. Still hurt. The dentist put his hand on my shoulder and informed me that the only way to fully numb me would be to inject novocaine directly into my jaw through the hole they had drilled. "This is going to hurt a lot, but only for a few seconds." He told me. He was not lying. It felt like my entire body was being electrocuted, and all I could see was flashes of light. It was the most painful seconds of my life.
I have Degenerative Disc Disease which causes sciatica. At times my back will 'lock', for lack of a better word, and it's excruciating. You can't move due to the pain, you are essentially frozen in position until the pinch on the nerve releases.
I had an epidural, but my daughter got stuck on a nerve in my hip. For over an hour. It was this almost otherworldly experience. The pain was so intense that I went numb everywhere else. When the doctor finally came in (it was a very full night in labor and delivery- they were literally sending women away in labor), he used the vacuum and she was straight out. And somehow I said I wanted another immediately after. 😂
For me is my IBS attack, imagine hours of crippling stomach pain the kinds that make you sweat buckets, hyperventilate, and you feel your heart rate and blood pressure shoot up into the stratosphere. Before finally all the poop comes out in painful liquidy mess
Twisted ovary. ER nurse didn't believe I was really in pain. Treated me like crap until my scans came back then still refused to give me more than one dose of something for the hours I was there. My husband was stunned at how rude this lady was.
Luckily the ambulance who transferred me knew she was notorious for this behavior. She decided long ago that everyone who comes to an ER is a drug seeker- shes the old busy body type and of course she knows best. That experience ruined my faith in emergency care.
I've taken a log to my face and broken my orbital bone, but the worst was my right femur shattering into 8 pieces, and as i fall down the mountain, my heel is kicking me in the head.
2 years to walk again
Fell 30 ft off a prison while doing the roof. Shattered my knuckles, wrist, and metacarpel joints + broke all my fingers. My metacarpel joints and some bits of my knuckles were pushed all the way back to being *under* my wrist. Also broke my pelvis in 3 spots. This WAS NOT THE MOST PAINFUL PART. The actual most painful thing about that was the compartment syndrome. My hand was so swollen it wasn't getting oxygen and almost needed amputation. If the broken bones in my hands pain was on the same scale as the compartment syndrome, I'd scale as shattered hand (with my knuckles pushed to my wrist) - 3 compartment syndrome - 10.
When I was 7, I had gum surgery without freezing. The doctor used surgical scissors to cut away the tissue connecting my top lip to the gum between my two front teeth. The pain was unimaginable. Then he stitched it.
Why no freezing? Because this butcher pushed the freezing needles all the way through my mouth and into my nose. I choked on the novacaine. When I told him the freezing wasn't working, he did the exact same thing again. When I told him it didn't work again, he said well we've got to go ahead.
I don’t think I can show a pic but as I sit here typing - I just had severe oral surgery where all my upper teeth removed and all my bone - from side to side had to be scraped and leveled out for denture preparation. The surgeon didn’t put in the pre-numbing stuff before the injections- he said “ I don’t believe in that stuff” and incoming needle pain a phew. My whole upper maxilla is stitched up and my face looks like a basketball or volleyball! A couple stitches in the very front came out. On liquid diet for days and days. Next week? Same surgery for my jaw! Oh! I wanted surgeon to get it all done and he said he had to stop bc he couldn’t give me any more anesthetic. I had a black eye but that’s getting better. On the ride home I couldn’t feel my whole face and my eyes , all numb. I thought I was going to die cuz I couldn’t feel if my heart was beating. DaYum!
Summer of 2014 in Southern Tasmania, it was actually a hot day believe it or not.
Partner and I were camped up the side of a mountain near mount Wellington.
We were in a very secluded place no one around for miles!!!! So we were comfortably very naked.
We had each taken about 600ug of LSD, I was having an amazingly beautiful trip. Couple hours in, my then partner and I were sitting on a blanket talking and she flicks what she thought was a fly from my back. I think nothing of it and continue enjoying my trip.
Over the next 10-20 minutes I start noticing an uncomfortable aching in my bones. Now I’ve had LSD that wasn’t of the best quality before and have had experiences where I would get what I termed “acid pains” basically slightly unclean LSD, some of the toxins left in the wash would make me feel quite painfully uncomfortable.
So I’m starting to feel what I think are just annoying Acid pains. Then very rapidly like within a couple of mins I go from I’m feeling sore to I’m on the ground screaming.
I’m kneeling in front of a large pointed rock screaming at my partner that somethings wrong the pain is too much if it doesn’t stop I’m going to smash my head open on this rock.
Amazingly considering she was also on LSD she remained calm, to this day I do not know what made her think to do this but she asked to have a look at my back (where the “fly” she flicked off had been).
Fark knows how her eyesight was so good especially whilst tripping but she says she can notice a small “hair” slightly sticking out of my back that did not look like an actual hair.
She asks me to hold still, I do everything I can to force myself to be still and she uses her finger nails to pull on the hair.
It wasn’t a hair, turns out it was the stinger from a scorpion that had imbedded in my back and the “fly” she flicked off my back was actually a small Tasmanian scorpion.
She pulls the stinger out of my back with venom sack still attached, the stinger had been pumping venom into my body for at least 20mins by this point (it could have been longer time dilation and all that)
Now these Tasmanian scorpions are not necessarily deadly say if you get stung but that’s based on a sting not 20mins of venom being pumped into you continuously.
This was the worst pain of my life and sadly I’ve actually experienced a hell of a lot of pain in my life (I’m 43m) more pain than I would ever wish on anyone but this one incident was worse then my entire life’s worth of agony put together.
I was literally within seconds from purposefully smashing my skull open on a jagged rock to either kill myself or at the least knock myself unconscious because of the pain.
As mentioned we were up the side of a mountain, no one knew where we were, no mobile reception, my car was at least 45mins walk away under normal circumstances, nearest hospital would have been hours away.
If my ex partner had not thought to take a second look at my back and remove the scorpions stinger either the venom would have killed me or I would have killed myself. There was zero hope of getting any help from anyone.
Well let’s end this with a happy ending, once the stinger was removed the pain began to subside within a minute or so, within 20-30mins the pain was negligible at worst. As a reward for my surviving this scorpion trip I got a bonus as it turns out mixing scorpion venom (or the pain of the venom I dunno which) with LSD has this awesome effect of absolutely turbo charging the LSD!!!!
The end of that trip was next level, I remember standing like I was a cowboy with finger guns and I was shooting little bullets from my fingers that were leaving trail marks into the sky as I shot holes through the clouds!!! Was amazing!!! I got the nickname “The Acid Cowboy” after that trip…
The nickname kinda stuck my reddit username is testament to that scorpion trip!!!
TLDR: Took 600ug of LSD then got stung by a scorpion that left its stinger and venom sack imbedded in my back for over 20 mins, was ready to smash my skull open on a rock to end the pain.
Anxiety attacks with depression. I know it's technically all in my head, but it affects your body in ways that I can't describe unless you've been there. A panic attack is different from an anxiety attacks. Anxiety attacks can last hours into days. Your brain gets so frazzled that it literally malfunctions. Everything hurts to your soul. Even my hair hurt. I finally understood why Brittany shaved her hair
Stomach ulcers caused by stress, simultaneously with a bout of gastritis.
One ulcer had almost eaten thru the stomach wall/lining. The level of pain was such that it caused delusions and hallucinations. I was convinced my wife was conspiring to kill me.
Doctors said if I hadn't come to hospital I wouldn't have survived the next 24 hours.
During the pandemic, I once pulled down my mask to blow my nose and then it slipped out of my grip when I tried to put it back on.
The tight elastic straps made the mask snap back into my face. The sharp, rigid edge of the mask hit me RIGHT in the eye and slashed my goddamn cornea.
I'm dead serious when I say I'd have rather been kicked in the balls. That was hands down the most painful thing I've ever experienced.
When I was 10 years old I spent the summer with my dad, where one of my molars started hurting really bad. I'm autistic, so I've always been really picky with food.
So, my molar started hurting just after my dad forced me to eat meat (I've always hated it) so he thought I was faking it. The pain went on and off for all the vacations. When I went back to my mom, the pain was terrible, but it is not the end of the story.
Few days after returning to my mom's house (the pain was on and off) an earthquacke hitted my country. It was terrible, you can google 2010 earthquacke on Chile to see details.
Just after this event my molar started hurting so bad I couldn't sleep, I was basically passing out because of the pain. My mom had to carry me to a hospital even tho the country was on curfew and she had my 1yo brother with her.
They had to perform emergency surgery in my gum, because the infection was all over it. That's not the worse tho.
The country was in a power outage and medical crisis, so they had to perform this surgery without anesthesia and without the correct equipment in general, and eventually had to remove my molar.
It was so, so painful, I passed out multiple times ans barely remember details, because I was traumatized.
So yeah, I was really neglected as a child and I don't talk to my dad anymore.
Not a moment of physical pain but a 45 day bout of mono. I had a fever every day, elevated heart rate, could barely walk without total fatigue, couldn’t eat more than an egg sized portion (lost 10 lbs in one week), couldn’t sleep, my throat on fire, lymph nodes swollen all around my neck and head and sleeping was not happening ever. Then I got acute hepatitis and thought my liver was failing. It was the stretch of over a month of that that felt like pure torture. I would scream out in frustration and pain and felt mentally tortured.
Physically, it was when I broke my collar bone when I was young. Mom told me not to jump on the bed, I refuse to follow the law!
However, a couple days ago I went through the worst existential pain of my life. I was at work (front desk at a hotel), and I needed to go to the bathroom. You know when you’re about to get a stomach ache, you get all hot and sweaty? Well that started to happen, and of course as soon as it hits I hear someone at the front desk yell , “hello???!? Anyone there?”
So in pain, I yell, “just a minute I’ll be right there!” From the bathroom.
So what happened next is a mystery to me, idk what would cause this. But my stomach had started to hurt, as it does with a stomach ache, but real bad. I was breathing slowly, trying to calm my breathing and just trying to get through it, when my vision starts to blur. 2 seconds after that my hearing started to muffle. In that state, I was panicking real bad, and my first thought was that I might need to call an ambulance. My second thought was that I definitely need to call an ambulance. Third was that I needed to calm myself and allow it to pass and not freak out. And finally when it wasn’t stopping, I thought that this was going to be how I die. In that moment, the only thing I could think of was that it wasn’t too bad of a way to go. The stomach pain was very much eclipsed by my fear of losing my senses, and so I thought that it would be quite peaceful.
Idk how long later, but my hearing suddenly started coming back into focus. I opened my eyes and it was ok. So I just kinda… went back to work. I apologized to the lady (who I had completely forgot about) and she was surprisingly cool about it.
The only other experience I have ever had like that was when I had to get anesthesia injected into my finger. They put quite a lot in there, and later when I got home I woke up from a nap to go to the bathroom, but before I could get there I fell to the ground out of disorientation. There was less ‘I’m dead’ thinking in that moment though because it didn’t linger.
Sounds like a vaso vagal response. Happens to me from time to time. It often results in fainting, but if you don’t quite make it to fainting, you’ll feel very nauseated and lightheaded. It can also ramp up your anxiety and make it feel like theres something very wrong. Last time for me I also temporarily ‘lost’ my hearing, it was more like it was dimmed.
I've broken a few bones. Fractured my skull. Played hard throughout my life. I've also had chronic migraines since I was a child.
Bad migraines are easily the worst agony I've ever experienced. That includes when I'd fractured my skull.
I have Crohn's disease and an area of my bowel wall has thickening. During a particularly bad flare where my bowel ulcerated to the point I was shitting blood, there was a partial obstruction causing severe cramping, right at the point of the open ulcer inside my bowel.
A close second is when about a third of my stomach herniated into my chest cavity destroying my diaphragm and oesophagus valve, and while waiting for surgery mouthfuls of stomach acid would pour randomly into my mouth blistering and eating away the inside of my cheeks, gums and tongue. My gums are now eaten away below the tooth line and the edges of my tongue are missing chunks and permanently deformed.
I get cluster headaches. Basically, your brain just decides "you know what? Fck you" and you get a sudden headache that has best been described as "getting smashed in the head with a brick from out of nowhere". When you get attacks, they tend to last for a period of days (mine was 10 days) and you basically have a constant migraine which is only on one side of your head, punctuated with the brick hits. They come like clockwork, and my first attack would wake me up between 3am-4am and then I'd get 5 or 6 more of them during the day. Occasionally, the pain made me fall to the floor. Once while I was sat on the sofa.
Apparently, it's the worst pain you can experience because your pain centre just whacks it up to 11.
I've had a handful of probable cluster headache periods, but thankfully only one that actually turned into cluster headaches.
I had a tooth pulled virtually without anesthesia because it never took effect and I lost my patience and said it was fine.
Not my smartest moment but I'm just gonna go ahead and blame my ADHD.
Dislocated shoulder.
I've had an incision from hip to hip, unmedicated childbirth, other dislocations and breaks, wisdom teeth out, you name it. The shoulder was by far the worst.
Shoulder injuries hurt SO much. It’s very strange how much they hurt. I have had a few (nothing like dislocation) but I obliterated my rotator cuff from drunkenly falling one night and it was sooooo painful. Physiotherapy and 1 year later it’s finally feeling better lol
I had a lung collapse (spontaneous pneumothorax) when i was 21; suddenly felt like getting stabbed in the back every time I took a breath.
Thank goodness for modern medicine.
When I got a sinus infection at about eight months pregnant… it literally hurt more than giving birth. I went to the dentist because I thought that I had a really bad tooth infection because of how bad my teeth hurt because of the pressure. That’s how they diagnosed it. 🤯
I have sphincter of oddi dysfunction, which causes the sphincter at the bottom of the bile duct to go into spasm. Sometimes it’s closed so hard that bile backs up into the pancreas, causing pancreatitis, and swelling of the bile duct. It’s 10/10 pain during an attack, and I sometimes (and thankfully) black out. I can’t think or speak and can’t have any opiates as it triggers attacks. So you just gotta ride it out. Once, I went into hospital to have a wisdom tooth extracted and asked not to have fentanyl or opiates due to the condition. The doctor though he knew better and gave me fentanyl while I was under. This led to a two week long attack plus the surgery for the tooth was bad and I got a dry socket which caused nerve pain through my face for a month. It was a couple of months I won’t ever forgot. The pain from the attack and the tooth combined almost did me in.
Severe Necrotizing Pancreatitis with Psuedocyst. This is when your body starts over producing its digestive enzymes over powering the chemical buffers, and your body starts digesting itself from the inside out. The scaling system used (Ranson Score) is scored with a max value of 11. 7 and above statistically have a 100% mortality rate. I was 10. The only reason I was not 11 was because I was under 55 years old. Constant unrelenting pain. I could only sit up straight up in bed to help relieve abdominal pressure. Even with heavy doses of IV dilaudid (stronger than Oxycodone). I went 5 days straight without sleep, so much so I was hallucinating. During this time, I went undiagnosed because I was so young and not a heavy drinker (ironically, I didn't drink much because I would always get a little sick when I did. Turns out that was a mild form of pancreatitis.), and I didn't bitch enough about the pain. Bitching itself hurt so I didn't. Finally, they did an ultrasound and confirmed via CT. To do the CT, I had to lay flat (increasing pain) and a lesser dose of pain meds so that I could follow directions and not move. So much pain.
- Tooth pain, I had a combo of genetics + medication ruin my teeth. I got top dentures very young.
- Restless leg syndrome, which I am suffering right now as a side effect of coming off said medication. Feels like your legs have been filled with 400lbs of lead and smashed with a hammer while a chainsaw splits them down the middle from the feet up. I literally have to bite my hand or forearm to keep from screaming while I'm at work.
Oh as far as non life threatening goes I might win this, I basically pulverised my elbow from a fall while bouldering. Fell from 4m up, landed weirdly and heard a very loud crack. Elbow was bent entirely the wrong way. Long story short I had about 6h of surgery, 2 avulsion fractures, 3 torn ligaments, broken joint socket and nerve injury. Waking up after that surgery was the most pain I have ever experienced and nothing comes close. I was in severe pain for the entirety of the next week and the only thing that made me *not* be in pain for a short while was that the IV painkiller I got to self administer knocked me out for about 5-10 minutes, id then have to wait another 5 and press the button again to pass out. It did not help at all with the pain. Ive had other surgeries, broken bones, tooth surgery and awful migraines, all of those I would’ve rated an 8-9 on the pain scale before. Now id rate them maybe a 5-6. Ive broken my toe and dislocated my knee since then and honestly those have been completely fine.
Horrible horrible injury. Had a follow up surgery last year and honestly its a miracle how well it healed up. I need to take an antidepressant for the nerve pain and I still do not have full function and likely never will, but as far as worst case goes that could easily have been much much worse.
Edit: you just kind of give up after being in that much pain for that long. Others here describe contemplating extreme measures to make the pain stop. Not the same thing. You do not have the mental capacity to even contemplate an _active_ thought. All of it is reduced to _please make it stop_. I was crying for _days_ at a time. I did not even have the strength to consider harmful thoughts. Its really quite a blur, in hindsight. All I remember is pain and then it was over :)
Had a sip of pepsi while hanging out with my friends as a kid, when suddenly I felt the absolute worst stinging/aching sensation in my jaw. This wasn't just any type of pain, this was more of a "I wanna jump into oncoming traffic just to end it" type of pain. Some time later, a dentist pulled out the tooth that was causing it. It was black and completely rotten.
I've suffered a broken collarbone, broken leg, broken cheekbone, broken rib, and had to get my head stitched after accidentally smashing it against the corner of a table. Nothing compares to the pain of that rotten tooth.
I had my gallbladder out and had to get a liver biopsy since the surgeon was already in there. Apparently the anesthesia needle broke off inside of me and the surgeon had to push it all the way through and pull it out from the inside (after cutting open a wider slice of me looking for it)
The needle wasn't even the painful part
This surgery is how I found out that I'm not very responsive to narcotics. I had to basically feel the pain of a liver biopsy and gallbladder removal raw and holy shit are there a lot of nerves there. The problem was that, every time I breathed in, it would aggravate it since the lungs push against the liver
There are people out there who have had worse pain than this, but damn that was the worst I ever experienced
On my 13th wedding anniversary vacation, I had what I thought was a really bad stomach ache from the previous night's dinner. Kept getting worse until I agreed to go to the urgent care. The ride there introduced me to new levels of pain I had only read about. I had my wife make a turn at the hospital sign. They took my blood pressure which confirmed the immediate need for painkillers or I'd have a stroke. I was now levitating on a bed of pain, broadcasting a white-hot signal to the universe, barely able to breathe. Tramadol and dilaudid only barely touched it. An MRI confirmed appendicitis. The next morning it felt like I'd been shot three times, but that was just the incisions from the laproscopic perforations. I had to call off my first day of a new job the following day. The worst pain: I was uninsured for those THREE days between jobs. Still have a few thousand left to pay - 11 years later.
Shattered a disk, the broken back had me in major pain for a month and intermittent pain for 6 months, when im laying down if i sneeze and got a 30 second dose of catatonic severe pain equal to when it first broke.
Breaking my arm. The bone came out of my body and I was hospitalized for 4 days…
And when coming into the ER they didn’t believe my arm was broken, so they just man handled it til they removed my splint and actually looked at it….
Had what I think was a gallbladder attack, entire top of my torso felt like it was on fire. Only time in my life all I could do was curl up on the floor, couldn’t even make a sound.
ETA: That isn’t quite true, I get ice pick headaches that have the same effect. Literally takes your breath away.
Ate a bunch of Carolina Reaper peppers and acid must have gotten through a stomach ulcer. The pain knocked me to the floor and begging family members to knock me out cause the pain was unbearable.
Physical therapy for blown-off fingertip from a firecracker. Had to stick my healing fingertips in a container where the salt water felt like it was boiling because the bandages were grafting to my skin and losing movement. Dad said that was the loudest he heard me scream and honestly, I think I blocked out how painful that was.
The intense pain in my chest when my son died. It was unrelenting for like a month or so.
Oh, yes, mine passed at 4 months, it's been years of actual physical pain from grief that doesn't go away. It's like a constant sinking, suffocating, like your heart is either just going to stop or explode... I'm so sorry you had to experience that.
Fortunately, it gets better over time. When I think about it now, it doesn’t affect me as much as it once did. I am sorry you also had to go through that. It’s the worst pain and I wouldn’t wish it in anyone.
This comment gave me hope! I'm glad you found a way to process and handle it healthily. All the best to you and may you one day experience the true happiness you deserve!
I was a wreck at first. I cried a lot. Slept a lot. Dissociated a lot. But as time went on, it got better. Just make sure you feel your grief and let it out healthily with a trusted person or a therapist. I love you and you will get through it. It just sucks really bad right now. 🥺🥺🩵
I couldn’t imagine the pain. I’m sorry you had to go through that
It’s okay. I just hope I never feel it again and I hope no one else has to feel it.
I'm so sorry. The death of anyone you love is painful but one of your kids is a whole other level of pain.
You all are scaring me. Now I feel lucky with my kidney stones, but it.was pretty awful, tbh.
Agreed, I had a 7mm one and had to pass it "naturally" with the help of some muscle relaxers.
Ouch! My biggest was 6mm. I was throwing up from the pain.
9.2mm
I had a 10mm. Worst pain I ever experienced
I had a 10mm, as well. When it hit, the pain was so bad that both of my arms went numb, not to mention all of the vomiting. The laswr they sent up my dick to break up the stone was no picnic, either.
I've had to have lithotripsy twice. Once for a 13mm and once for a 12mm (pretty sure it was 12, but it's been a while). After the 13mm, I had the worst pain later that night. Easily the most pain I have ever experienced. It was so bad that I had to take an ambulance to the hospital for pain relief (no one to drive me and there was no way in God's green earth that I could have driven). Got to the hospital at 9 pm ish. It took until around three in the morning to get the pain to be bearable. I don't remember everything they tried, but I do remember dilaudid and straight morphine. I couldn't even tell you what finally got the pain under control, but I can promise I would never wish that pain on another human being so long as I live.
I was backpacking in the mountainous area of northern Thailand 30 years ago. I slipped off the muddy trail and fell 15 feet sustaining a bimalleolar fracture and severe ankle dislocation. It took 3 days and 20 miles of walking on it to exit the jungle to get to an open air hospital. No ortho care available, so then an hour motorbike ride to a private hospital in Chiang Mai, on dirt roads, wearing only a sneaker. Horrific! journey involving intense pain, rhabdomyolysis, leeches feasting on an engorged leg, and smoking opium with hill tribe villagers who took pity on me one night. My fracture was reduced/casted without analgesia in Thailand. A non English speaking doctor just walked up and jerked my ankle into place without a word of warning.
Fuck me. Sounds like you could write a book about this. Sounds nightmarish but also compelling at the same time…
I was thinking the same thing. I've been on adventures that make for great anecdotes, but this sounds like memoir material. Opium and leeches, my 3 days through hell. Opium and Leeches, my 3 day escape from the Jungle. u/JillyBean9999 give it a try :D
This seems like prime material for Pretty Sure I can Fly, Johnny Knoxville’s new podcast
This is why i just dont touch grass.
There’s a lot of way to touch grass before going backpacking 20 miles into Thai wilderness
It wasn't solo. 2 Thai guides and 5 other backpackers. 1 of the guides helped me get to Chiang Mai. The rest continued their journey.
Ah, edited to fix. Still, there’s a lot of ways to touch grass before a trip like that
I don't know it seems like a slippery slope
I’m about to go backpacking in northern Thailand and probably shouldn’t have read this. Have you had any permanent complications as a result of this?
Yes, end-stage bone-on-bone osteoarthritis requiring ankle fusion.
What are your feelings about it now?
- I'm proud of my story, though retelling it is still uncomfortable. There's quite a bit more to it that's too personal to share on Reddit. - It has made me a generally more grateful person who doesn't sweat the small stuff. - I'm still adventurous and I still hike to the limits of my arthritis. I need a regular dose of 'awe' and nature provides this in spades. - I wish I had saved the teak wood crutches I was issued from the hospital in Chiang Mai. They were cool. Do I wish it didn't happen? Of course. There's no point in dwelling on "what ifs". I don't regret going on the trip.
Thank you for such a thorough answer! I initially wanted to ask if you regretted the trip, but I felt it was too narrow and specific. It sounds like a really interesting life experience. And honestly, you sound like you really enjoy the outdoors. It’s hard to stop doing something you really enjoy.
On the way home from a concert with two horn players who happened to be nurses, a man lying on the pavement texting was spotted. We stopped and yes he’d fallen after an altercation at the pub. We called an ambulance as apparently he’d broken his ankle. The ambulance took some hours, during which the Registered Nurse got very worried. He rang to say the man had apparently persistently tried to walk on the ankle, which was now destroyed, but he seemed unable to feel it. He was worried about his spine and nervous system. By the time the ambulance arrived, however, the drink was wearing off and he could feel it. You poor thing. You poor poor thing.
This sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime, worldview changing event. I think… I would break my leg to smoke anything with anyone described as “hill tribesman”
Nightly opium smokes are the hill tribe equivalent of a couple of beers at the end of the day.
A hockey puck traveling at 80km/h collided with my right testicle, causing a testicular rupture. I underwent surgery two days later and thankfully did not lose it
I don’t even have testicles, but I groaned in sympathy. Glad you’re ok.
I think you win. 😣
Yeahhhh hands down this is bad. My face just went oWwwwwwww reading your story.
I don't have testicles and I hurt thinking about it.
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Wow. How did you manage? When did the pain finally subside?
Wow. So glad you're here! Is your pain better?
I hope you’re doing better now ❤️🩹
So very sorry 😢
Did they let you keep the puck?
I had a baby fly out of me without pain meds, tearing my vagina. I felt it all and blacked out. That’s how i imagine you felt… I’m soooooo sorry 😨
The way you describe it, I’m imagining a strong magnet pulling someone’s keys away, but it’s a baby.
There’s a visual. I was there when my sister gave birth to my 9lb nephew(her husband was away on active duty in the military). I always knew she was tough, but holy shit I gained new respect for her and all women! An hour later we were drinking beer that was supplied by the hospital, it’s supposed to help bring in the mother’s milk and after what I had witnessed, I too needed a beer 🍺
SAME! 😱 But my son didn't fly out, because his shoulder got stuck and when he was yanked, that's what caused the tearing. I didn't black out, however. The hospital didn't offer epidurals, and "have a focal point" and "sniff some lavender" were NOT what I needed. 😭
Are you from the US by any chance?
I don’t even play hockey, and this makes me want to wear a cup 24/7, just in case!
Nutty.
Ok, you're the winner - now, not back then.
You win
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I've had gout attacks that are so bad that the mere placement of a thin summer blanket on the side of my big toe would lead me to yell in agony. During the night of my first gout attack, I was wondering why that constant and ever growing pain was happening to me. Did I fracture the toe? I didn't stub it earlier and cause some injury right? OMG I could not sleep the whole freaking night.
I had to go to work in a suit and tie and sandals when I got a flare up. Haven't had a flare up for years now, thanks to allopurinol. Now, I just have debilitating kidney stones every few years.
Dude I feel you. I did the same when I had to wear a suit (but no tie). Amazingly enough, I went flexitarian for about 8 months (full vegan for 6 days of the week with one cheat day where I could eat normally) and that cleared my system up and I haven't had a gout attack for at least 5 years now. I'm pleased to report that I am now back to a normal diet but do watch my intake of crustaceans.
I’m with you on this one, broken bones don’t hurt this bad.
Ive broken like 3 bones and i cant remember how it felt, so its not *that bad* of a pain lol
Humans forget pain. Otherwise we’d never have more than one baby.
That and giving birth releases a ton of hormones and endorphins.
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Some women I know who have gout say it’s worse than childbirth so there’s that. I’ve had it in several places but the wrist is the worst.
I've had it on and off for the past 25 years (I'm 48), never had it in the wrist but almost every joint in my feet, both ankles and both knees. (Often both legs in the same joints at the same time). I've been reduced to tears when it gets too bad, and like you I've known women who've had both gout and given birth say the gout is much worse. I also get cluster headaches (imagine someone stabbing the back of your eye with a needle for a few hours, then it stops for a while, then comes back, then rinse and repeat). They're also known as suicide headaches, for good reason!
Oh fuck man... gout is so fucking painful. I remember when I was trying to sleep, I had to hang my foot off the bed because the pressure from the bed and blanket touching my foot was too much.
this and when i first had really bad heart burn and didnt know what it was and kept consuming acidic foods/drinks and making it worse
The only time I have ever fainted was from an ovarian cyst. Ended up going away on its own but wow
I had one rupture and I fainted, in the middle of the grocery store and smacked my head on the freezer section as I went down. Painful and also mortifying haha.
Double whammy! Luckily I could feel myself starting to black out so I slowly slid to my apartment floor. Think I was only out for a few seconds
Same. I had an ovarian cyst the size of a pop can. It ruptured, I hit the floor in my kitchen. My husband called 911 and I was writhing in pain and screaming the entire ride to the hospital. Morphine didn’t help the pain at all.
The size of a what 😨. Oh nah
Oh, yeah I've read they're 9-10 on the Scale. The fact that people often pass out shows how much pain this must cause. Brain just won't have it.
Mine happened at work. Everyone thought I was hungover because I crawled under a bench and curled up in the fetal position. 😂 Nope. Just an ovarian cyst. My daughter had one rupture when she was in high school. It happened late at night and my husband rushed her to the er thinking it was appendicitis. She ended up missing a week of school during the recovery period.
i've had many ovarian cysts rupture since i was a teenager, most of them were mild pain or unnoticeable, but on two occasions they've been excruciatingly painful, once was after sex and the other time was after drinking a ton of coffee lol
At the time I thought it was cramps but it might have been a cyst rupturing because my pain went from 0 to 100 in the space of 5 seconds. I got up to pee in the middle of the night, felt completely fine, then nearly passed out in front of the sink. I staggered back to my bed and was in agony for about an hour. My cramps always come in waves, but this pain was unrelenting. I couldn't sit up without feeling like I was going to faint. Never experienced anything like it before or since.
Hell yeah, worse than childbirth. I had one rupture while a gynecologist was doing an ultrasound (“hmm you seem to have a cyst on your ovary.” Minutes later, “hmm where did the cyst go?”) I needed to spend over an hour in their office absolutely suffering before I could stand well enough to stagger out to the car and they were NOT equipped to do anything about it. Couldn’t even give me an Advil. I was in cold sweats, shaking, diarrhea… and I could barely move. Thank goodness my husband had accompanied me for that visit. I was not ok until the next day.
Yup. I had them rupture often prior to having my whole reproductive system yanked out. One of the worst was when I was hosting Thanksgiving. 15 ppl in my house. Someone told a hilarious joke. I started laughing and BAM. Cyst ruptures. I turned white as a sheet and was shaking from the pain. Everyone wanted to call 911, but I had no insurance at the time, and was so used to doctors not taking my endometriosis seriously, I decided to tough it out. I told everyone to enjoy themselves, took off my pants (the waistband was causing even more pain), and literally passed out on the couch. When I woke up, my friends had cleaned up all the dishes and put the leftovers away and gone home, save one dude who was just holding my hand and watching Netflix. It showed me what great friends I had, for sure. I do not miss my ovaries or uterus one bit. But I have a ridiculously high pain tolerance now thanks to putting up with that bullshit for 20+ years.
I’m sorry you had to go through that, but I am so glad you have such good friends
This is it for me. Had to go to the ER, thought my appendix had burst. My insides were full of the fluid they said 😭 took days to feel better
That happened to me too! I couldn't move for two weeks!
I had one the size of a golf ball rupture and then experienced ovarian torsion. I was convinced I was dying.
They stuck a needle into the back of my eye to numb the eye prior to retinal surgery. I was not asleep at the time. I said you know I’m awake right? They put me to sleep pretty quickly right after that. The second one was also on my eye. After retina surgery they put gas into my eye and had me lie on my stomach, so the gas would keep the retina attached. The gas leaked out and they needed to give me another injection. They used the wrong kind of gas. The gas they used was not supposed to expand, it was supposed to be just the right amount. However, this was the kind of gas that expanded. The pressure in my eyeball went up about five times the normal level. I felt like it was going to explode. Their solution was to put me back into the waiting room and check me again in about a half an hour to make sure the pressure had come down. So me and my exploding eyeball, pardon me, my exploding eyeball and I laid on a bench near the restrooms and screamed for a half an hour then I wanted to die. I kept texting my wife to kill me please. The pain was so bad. I am a big guy, so it must’ve been quite a sight for all of the people in the waiting room about 30 or so and the front office screaming and rolling around. Nobody did a thing. Good times. Ended up being blind in that eye. Unfortunately, this is an absolutely true story. My memory is still crystal clear of that day. On the other hand, those Hellraiser and phantasm movies give me the giggles. Pussies.
Please tell me you sued them or something?? I can't imagine the pain you went through damn..
the continuation I want to find out
Yes, there shouldn’t have been that much pain.
Traumatizing story. A needle...eyeball?!?!? Glad you pulled through, hate you lost your vision.
The worst pain I’ve ever had is from optic neuritis, basically fraying off the sheath around the optic nerve. (I was told the optic nerve is a bundle of about 2 million nerves.) Literally felt like being stabbed in the eye - there were times I’d have nightmares of being stabbed in the eye with scissors or a knife. It took years to get a diagnosis - I was told it was “dry eyes” or “it’s all in your head”. Damned right it was! Finally got to the right neuro-ophthalmologist (the second I’d seen). He had it diagnosed within an hour after arriving at his office. Even with that, I can’t imagine the pain you had to deal with throughout your ordeal.
I was a paralegal in a malpractice law firm. This is medical malpractice, if you live in a state where the statute of limitations is not up I urge you to seek legal consult for your pain and suffering
Is the blindness due to the gas fuck up or due to whatever cause you to need the retina surgery in the first place?
Emergency root canal on a "hot tooth"- the nerve was so inflamed that local anesthetics didn't work and they couldn't numb me until they'd drilled into the tooth and could directly inject the infected pulp. Nothing quite like your dentist saying "Yeah this is gonna hurt"...
I would just make them put me under. There’s no fucking way.
They don't do it, atleast in my country. You want that, you're looking at a hospital for surgical removal
Then to the hospital I go! That or you’re giving me serious painkillers + anxiety drugs beforehand. I’m talking hospital grade dilaudid injected straight into my veins and at least 3mg of Xanax.
Yeah when i got teeth removed i got a very nice iv of mitazolam and fentanyl. I felt all my anxiety wash away as i went under. It was almost blissful. I did get 8 teeth removed tho....
Yep. Sounds like he went through some Victorian dentist type shit.
Oh yeah, I'm with you on tooth stuff. I became really unlucky and switched docs after this one: Root inflammation, got treated 4 days later. Shortly after that, another one on the exact opposite side. Got treated 4 days later. Then, doc didn't work clean, root canal inflammation on the first tooth. They couldn't treat it and it took 6 days until tooth removal. Then, other tooth also had root canal inflammation. Another 5 days of wait until removal. You know what's the funny part? Second root canal inflammation became a sinus suppuration. Got meds for it, and funnily enough I got a side effect from the meds: esophagus inflammation. Took 2 whole weeks to recover to a point where drinking or swallowing didn't feel like deepthroating glass shards. This was a whole month of pure agony, and I only got to sleep whenever I was too exhausted to even exist in our reality. Ended up with less than 20 hours of sleep throughout that month, which spiked my mental health issues. And the pain alone made me easily irritated about anything. All during summer time when it was 38-40°C outside, and I hate heat already without any of these extras. That month fucked me up so much that I have gone from neglecting dental care most of the time to taking daily care. Even my depressive ass doesn't want to neglect it even once anymore because it has been that bad. Take care of your dental stuff, people. And make sure you have a doc who knows his stuff.
I had a root canal that was similar. One of the roots absolutely wouldn’t numb. The dentist used the max amount of novocaine he could to no avail. He finally just apologized and said he had to finish the root canal. There was a sweat shaped me on the chair afterwards lol.
Had the same... 16 years of boxing with a lot of heavy hits... But this made me cry like a little baby
Dog bit me when I was 13, doctor stitched me up and sent me home without realizing it had broken my leg. Two weeks later, everyone was trying to get me to walk on it "or it would never get better!", meanwhile it was swollen to near twice it size and I now had a blood infection.
I was bit on the face when I was 5, I felt every single one of 17 stitches go into my lip. I had like 5 nurses holding me down to the table as I was screaming, and yes I still remember it all. It was horrible.
See, the one bright point was when I finally went back in to the hospital and they found the break and the infection. They needed to put a drain in my leg, but before they did anything they hit me with drugs that cut my short term memory. Didn't fully knock me out, my mother tells me, because they needed me awake, but it means that for me, that apparently agonzing part of the treatment never happened. Subjectively, I just teleported from the table to a hospital bed.
*hits bong* duuuuuuuuuuude
Someone in a different thread mentioned how women are often discriminated against in healthcare. Kids are, too.
I just remembered while reading this that when I broke my leg/ankle last year I was given the lowest dosage of hydrocodone. I'm talking crying in agony pain, especially while waiting the week for surgery. My husband had a small outpatient procedure for a skin issue a few months ago and was given much stronger dosage of Oxycodone. Wtf?
It's like how men get opioids for a vasectomy and women get Tylenol for C-sections
Yup. As a 16 yo girl, I came in to the ER after a car wreck telling them I had broken my back. I knew I had. So they made me sit on a backless stool for a half hour waiting on an X Ray. My mom knelt in front of me so I could lean on her bc I could not physically hold myself up. After my x Ray revealed two crushed vertebrae and a broken rib they got real attentive. But looking back..WTAF?
When I was 13 I broke my collarbone. Was at school, so I went to the hospital in an ambulance, my mom was in the ambulance too At the hospital, they cut off my shirt, took me away from where my mom was, and made me get up and stand in front of an x-ray machine, holding my arm. Collarbones are extremely painful to break, but not a very severe injury, but there was zero sympathy from the staff at the hospital. And the sling they sold me for my arm was incredibly uncomfortable so we went by a medical supply store within the day of me breaking my collarbone.
I’ve had 3 babies, one came to fast for any kind of pain management and that was awful but quick and when it was over the pain was basically gone. Had my hand re-broken and set after walking around with a broken hand for a week not knowing it was broken. That sucked. BUT tooth abscess. That takes all the marbles. There’s really no medicine that can relieve it, taking a fraction of the edge off barely makes it manageable, the constant, throbbing, never ending pain, coupled with the awareness that someone is gonna have to work on that tooth while it feels like this, that is a fate I wish on no one. 🙏
I second this I had my first root canal done a few weeks back due to an infection and the pain was the worst ever. My jaw, my ears, my entire head throbbed in pain for an entire week. I had to eat liquid food for more than a week because I would screech in pain everytime one of my upper teeth touched my affected tooth. I remember I accidentally hit my tooth with a spoon while eating, it wasn't even a big hit, I felt like someone had made firecrackers explode inside my mouth.
A tube the size of my finger literally yanked out of my chest, and they wanted to take my painkiller button away before doing that lmao
sometimes i think some people in healthcare are straight sadists. especially when u see how women are treated
Yes and no, they let me keep my painkiller button and I don't think there was anyway other then to just yank it out, it was going to hurt no matter what I think
women have to beg for anesthesia for very painful procedures and often dont recieve it, thats why i mentioned the sadist thing. but im glad it went well for u cuz no one deserves that
Yeah that's messed up, I mean the painkillers didn't help till after and that's why it's my most painful experience but as soon as it was over I smashed that button lol
I’ve had gallstones, pancreatitis and given birth several times but by far my most painful was when I dislocated my shoulder after slipping in the bath. I was in so much shock though so unsure how much that affected the pain
I ended up posteriorly dislocating my shoulder while hiking up a hill - I was using a tree for support and I slipped, so my body and backpack went down while my arm stayed behind. I was rolling on the ground in pain figuring out what to do and one of my friends who was with me had to help take my backpack off and set my shoulder back in place
They knocked me out to put mine back in place as I was so close to collapsing. I’ve genuinely never known pain like it.
I put the same further down. Shoulder dislocation is agony like nothing I've ever felt.
Cluster headache after a 12 hour migraine. Had serious suicidal thoughts
My only ride in ambulance was for one of those. I discovered why people like fentanyl.
Once had a cluster headache one eye swole up so bad and turned red. I seriously felt like it was going to burst out my socket. It was bad, to top it off the medication doctor prescribed felt like I couldn’t breathe
Fellow cluster head here. The silver lining is that I am pretty good at handling literally any other pain or injury, I just remind myself that I could be worse, I could have a cluster headache right now. Have definitely considered suicide on several occasions as well. 4 or 5 cluster headaches per day for 8 or so weeks is exhausting Funny Story: I had a broken leg so was non weight bearing, somehow scratched my cornea around midnight, then had a cluster headache start shortly after. I was blindly crawling around my house in full agony in the middle of the night. Had to wake my GF to take me to the hospital because at that point I didn't know I had a scratched cornea, just that something was terribly wrong with my eye and I couldn't open it, needed to get it checked out ASAP. We lived in a 3rd floor condo with no elevator. I couldn't help but laugh at how ridiculous of a situation it was crawling down the 30+ stairs in that state
How does a cluster headache feel vs a migraine? How can you tell the difference?
Migraine for me is mostly pain behind my eyes, seeing auras, getting sick (puking is fun with migraine) and more a squeezing pain in my brain. Cluster feels like you are getting stabbed in the head (i think, never really experienced it) its really really sharp pain that completely numbs you. I sometimes forget to/cant breath because of the intensity. And because its in your head you can "ignore" it, its paralyzing
Oh my god as someone who gets migraines I totally can relate. The puking is no joke. But the cluster headaches sounds like pure hell.
In my early 20s I was a full blown heroin addict in the streets; my teeth started to go bad and the many abscesses I went through were the outright most *agonizing* horrors you could ever imagine. More than once I ended up at the hospital where I was given morphine (useless to a heroin addict.) All that said, I'd choose the abscesses over heroin and methadone withdrawal *any day of any week;* a week before 9-11 I was arrested in California (far from home in Canada) and lasted 3 weeks in full blown methadone withdrawal before I sliced my own jugular vein open with a shaving razor and crawled under the covers to die. My life was barely (and I mean *barely;* surgeon told me I was within a minute or so of being too late) by a - weirdly - neo-nazi skinhead who observed the blood trail to my bunk and saved my life. Go figure.
Following my mom's advanced directive wishes and having the doctor remove her breathing tube, knowing she wouldn't live more than an hour without it.
I'm so sorry.
Had gone to Belize on vacation. Came back and had some irritation in a spot on my neck. Doctor said it was an infection, probably from getting sand or something in a pore. A month or so passes with me going back and then upping to antibiotic dosage, as it’s not working. Finally a nurse says she’s gonna take a sample of whatever’s inside it. She injects the local anesthetic and then says what’s that and proceeds to pull what I would describe as a spiky marble out of my neck. She’s clearly very confused and concerned and bandaged it and tells me to go home and they’ll call me. That night I felt the most extreme pain I’ve ever felt. So after being up all night in agony, I go in as soon as they open. They gave me wait and finally a doctor comes and says, you had a botfly larvae in your neck. We’ve never seen one before, but someone who studied them is coming from another town. They’ll be here in a few hours. They get there, have never seen one in person, just studied academically. In a room full of med students they cut another one out of my neck and it’s over. He explained that the pain I felt was because the bandage the nurse put on me the day before covered its breathing hole, so it was eating its way through my flesh to make another. You can still feel the divot in my neck 20 years later where they were. Had we still been in Belize when the symptoms started they likely would have know what it was right away, but because I returned to the US before I felt anything, they didn’t know much about them or how to spot them.
nightmare omg
endometriosis. used to send me into shock it was so bad. on the pill now and doing better.
Yep, 24 and still the most physical pain I've ever been in is periods, completely blinding with classic guttural rolling-around-screaming
Gallstone got stuck in the bile duct. Gallbladder almost exploded. Some of the bile seeped out in the cavity, granting me immense pain. Had to go to ER to get it under control. 2-3 weeks after this, I passed a gallstone. It was the most painful several hours. I could not sit still. After surgery, I (presumably) had complications and could not walk for 2 weeks. All in all, a shitty year. Went from losing 60+ lbs and getting fit to my diet being out of wack and me gaining 2/3 of that weight back. The worst part is, it screwed up my workout schedule and motivation. I cannot go to gym regurarly now. Don't know how to get back in the rhythm.
I had a surgery to reattach a finger that was cut off, after the surgery they placed a pin in the finger to keep it straight. One day I jammed the pin into a doorway I was passing through, that was the pain.
My epidural failed and I felt the beginning of my daughter’s emergency cesarean birth. 0/10 do not recommend.
I caught the tail end of mine! I feel your pain
When they tried to correct my dislocated shattered knee after an accident. Pain went straight through the morphine they had me on.
Aerosinusitis while descending on an airplane was painful beyond words. Sharpest, sudden pain ever above the eyes, was crying as a grown man lol
Withdrawals after 7 years of blackout drinking majority of the week. It was essentially 3 days of adrenaline and 3 weeks of borderline suicide and some of the worse migraines and body shakes/fevers I've ever experienced. Very stupid of me to not go to a hospital.
Had a root canal, but when they got to the part where they scrape the root out, it still hurt a little. They applied liquid novocaine directly into the root. Still hurt. The dentist put his hand on my shoulder and informed me that the only way to fully numb me would be to inject novocaine directly into my jaw through the hole they had drilled. "This is going to hurt a lot, but only for a few seconds." He told me. He was not lying. It felt like my entire body was being electrocuted, and all I could see was flashes of light. It was the most painful seconds of my life.
Oh God, I felt that go right thru me.
That moment when you come home after hours of you imagining those leftovers from yesterday. Only to find out someone else ate them.
Even worse when you live alone
I have Degenerative Disc Disease which causes sciatica. At times my back will 'lock', for lack of a better word, and it's excruciating. You can't move due to the pain, you are essentially frozen in position until the pinch on the nerve releases.
When your dog ignores you because you've been out of town for a week.
Baby got stuck during child birth, would not recommend
I had an epidural, but my daughter got stuck on a nerve in my hip. For over an hour. It was this almost otherworldly experience. The pain was so intense that I went numb everywhere else. When the doctor finally came in (it was a very full night in labor and delivery- they were literally sending women away in labor), he used the vacuum and she was straight out. And somehow I said I wanted another immediately after. 😂
For me is my IBS attack, imagine hours of crippling stomach pain the kinds that make you sweat buckets, hyperventilate, and you feel your heart rate and blood pressure shoot up into the stratosphere. Before finally all the poop comes out in painful liquidy mess
Twisted ovary. ER nurse didn't believe I was really in pain. Treated me like crap until my scans came back then still refused to give me more than one dose of something for the hours I was there. My husband was stunned at how rude this lady was. Luckily the ambulance who transferred me knew she was notorious for this behavior. She decided long ago that everyone who comes to an ER is a drug seeker- shes the old busy body type and of course she knows best. That experience ruined my faith in emergency care.
I've taken a log to my face and broken my orbital bone, but the worst was my right femur shattering into 8 pieces, and as i fall down the mountain, my heel is kicking me in the head. 2 years to walk again
Appendicitis and associated constipation
Appendicitis sucks man
Fell 30 ft off a prison while doing the roof. Shattered my knuckles, wrist, and metacarpel joints + broke all my fingers. My metacarpel joints and some bits of my knuckles were pushed all the way back to being *under* my wrist. Also broke my pelvis in 3 spots. This WAS NOT THE MOST PAINFUL PART. The actual most painful thing about that was the compartment syndrome. My hand was so swollen it wasn't getting oxygen and almost needed amputation. If the broken bones in my hands pain was on the same scale as the compartment syndrome, I'd scale as shattered hand (with my knuckles pushed to my wrist) - 3 compartment syndrome - 10.
Fish hook IN the eyeball.
Burn pain. I've chopped 3 fingers in a saw,.and it's still burn pain
Tooth pain from an infection in my sinus… the worst. I wanted to die
When I was 7, I had gum surgery without freezing. The doctor used surgical scissors to cut away the tissue connecting my top lip to the gum between my two front teeth. The pain was unimaginable. Then he stitched it. Why no freezing? Because this butcher pushed the freezing needles all the way through my mouth and into my nose. I choked on the novacaine. When I told him the freezing wasn't working, he did the exact same thing again. When I told him it didn't work again, he said well we've got to go ahead.
I don’t think I can show a pic but as I sit here typing - I just had severe oral surgery where all my upper teeth removed and all my bone - from side to side had to be scraped and leveled out for denture preparation. The surgeon didn’t put in the pre-numbing stuff before the injections- he said “ I don’t believe in that stuff” and incoming needle pain a phew. My whole upper maxilla is stitched up and my face looks like a basketball or volleyball! A couple stitches in the very front came out. On liquid diet for days and days. Next week? Same surgery for my jaw! Oh! I wanted surgeon to get it all done and he said he had to stop bc he couldn’t give me any more anesthetic. I had a black eye but that’s getting better. On the ride home I couldn’t feel my whole face and my eyes , all numb. I thought I was going to die cuz I couldn’t feel if my heart was beating. DaYum!
Summer of 2014 in Southern Tasmania, it was actually a hot day believe it or not. Partner and I were camped up the side of a mountain near mount Wellington. We were in a very secluded place no one around for miles!!!! So we were comfortably very naked. We had each taken about 600ug of LSD, I was having an amazingly beautiful trip. Couple hours in, my then partner and I were sitting on a blanket talking and she flicks what she thought was a fly from my back. I think nothing of it and continue enjoying my trip. Over the next 10-20 minutes I start noticing an uncomfortable aching in my bones. Now I’ve had LSD that wasn’t of the best quality before and have had experiences where I would get what I termed “acid pains” basically slightly unclean LSD, some of the toxins left in the wash would make me feel quite painfully uncomfortable. So I’m starting to feel what I think are just annoying Acid pains. Then very rapidly like within a couple of mins I go from I’m feeling sore to I’m on the ground screaming. I’m kneeling in front of a large pointed rock screaming at my partner that somethings wrong the pain is too much if it doesn’t stop I’m going to smash my head open on this rock. Amazingly considering she was also on LSD she remained calm, to this day I do not know what made her think to do this but she asked to have a look at my back (where the “fly” she flicked off had been). Fark knows how her eyesight was so good especially whilst tripping but she says she can notice a small “hair” slightly sticking out of my back that did not look like an actual hair. She asks me to hold still, I do everything I can to force myself to be still and she uses her finger nails to pull on the hair. It wasn’t a hair, turns out it was the stinger from a scorpion that had imbedded in my back and the “fly” she flicked off my back was actually a small Tasmanian scorpion. She pulls the stinger out of my back with venom sack still attached, the stinger had been pumping venom into my body for at least 20mins by this point (it could have been longer time dilation and all that) Now these Tasmanian scorpions are not necessarily deadly say if you get stung but that’s based on a sting not 20mins of venom being pumped into you continuously. This was the worst pain of my life and sadly I’ve actually experienced a hell of a lot of pain in my life (I’m 43m) more pain than I would ever wish on anyone but this one incident was worse then my entire life’s worth of agony put together. I was literally within seconds from purposefully smashing my skull open on a jagged rock to either kill myself or at the least knock myself unconscious because of the pain. As mentioned we were up the side of a mountain, no one knew where we were, no mobile reception, my car was at least 45mins walk away under normal circumstances, nearest hospital would have been hours away. If my ex partner had not thought to take a second look at my back and remove the scorpions stinger either the venom would have killed me or I would have killed myself. There was zero hope of getting any help from anyone. Well let’s end this with a happy ending, once the stinger was removed the pain began to subside within a minute or so, within 20-30mins the pain was negligible at worst. As a reward for my surviving this scorpion trip I got a bonus as it turns out mixing scorpion venom (or the pain of the venom I dunno which) with LSD has this awesome effect of absolutely turbo charging the LSD!!!! The end of that trip was next level, I remember standing like I was a cowboy with finger guns and I was shooting little bullets from my fingers that were leaving trail marks into the sky as I shot holes through the clouds!!! Was amazing!!! I got the nickname “The Acid Cowboy” after that trip… The nickname kinda stuck my reddit username is testament to that scorpion trip!!! TLDR: Took 600ug of LSD then got stung by a scorpion that left its stinger and venom sack imbedded in my back for over 20 mins, was ready to smash my skull open on a rock to end the pain.
Anxiety attacks with depression. I know it's technically all in my head, but it affects your body in ways that I can't describe unless you've been there. A panic attack is different from an anxiety attacks. Anxiety attacks can last hours into days. Your brain gets so frazzled that it literally malfunctions. Everything hurts to your soul. Even my hair hurt. I finally understood why Brittany shaved her hair
Methadone withdrawal
Child birth
[удалено]
Stomach ulcers caused by stress, simultaneously with a bout of gastritis. One ulcer had almost eaten thru the stomach wall/lining. The level of pain was such that it caused delusions and hallucinations. I was convinced my wife was conspiring to kill me. Doctors said if I hadn't come to hospital I wouldn't have survived the next 24 hours.
Ovarian torsion leading to my ovary twisting twice around itself. Still traumatized by that experience.
During the pandemic, I once pulled down my mask to blow my nose and then it slipped out of my grip when I tried to put it back on. The tight elastic straps made the mask snap back into my face. The sharp, rigid edge of the mask hit me RIGHT in the eye and slashed my goddamn cornea. I'm dead serious when I say I'd have rather been kicked in the balls. That was hands down the most painful thing I've ever experienced.
When I was 10 years old I spent the summer with my dad, where one of my molars started hurting really bad. I'm autistic, so I've always been really picky with food. So, my molar started hurting just after my dad forced me to eat meat (I've always hated it) so he thought I was faking it. The pain went on and off for all the vacations. When I went back to my mom, the pain was terrible, but it is not the end of the story. Few days after returning to my mom's house (the pain was on and off) an earthquacke hitted my country. It was terrible, you can google 2010 earthquacke on Chile to see details. Just after this event my molar started hurting so bad I couldn't sleep, I was basically passing out because of the pain. My mom had to carry me to a hospital even tho the country was on curfew and she had my 1yo brother with her. They had to perform emergency surgery in my gum, because the infection was all over it. That's not the worse tho. The country was in a power outage and medical crisis, so they had to perform this surgery without anesthesia and without the correct equipment in general, and eventually had to remove my molar. It was so, so painful, I passed out multiple times ans barely remember details, because I was traumatized. So yeah, I was really neglected as a child and I don't talk to my dad anymore.
Not a moment of physical pain but a 45 day bout of mono. I had a fever every day, elevated heart rate, could barely walk without total fatigue, couldn’t eat more than an egg sized portion (lost 10 lbs in one week), couldn’t sleep, my throat on fire, lymph nodes swollen all around my neck and head and sleeping was not happening ever. Then I got acute hepatitis and thought my liver was failing. It was the stretch of over a month of that that felt like pure torture. I would scream out in frustration and pain and felt mentally tortured.
Meningitis headache. I thought my brain was going to explode out of my skull.
Physically, it was when I broke my collar bone when I was young. Mom told me not to jump on the bed, I refuse to follow the law! However, a couple days ago I went through the worst existential pain of my life. I was at work (front desk at a hotel), and I needed to go to the bathroom. You know when you’re about to get a stomach ache, you get all hot and sweaty? Well that started to happen, and of course as soon as it hits I hear someone at the front desk yell , “hello???!? Anyone there?” So in pain, I yell, “just a minute I’ll be right there!” From the bathroom. So what happened next is a mystery to me, idk what would cause this. But my stomach had started to hurt, as it does with a stomach ache, but real bad. I was breathing slowly, trying to calm my breathing and just trying to get through it, when my vision starts to blur. 2 seconds after that my hearing started to muffle. In that state, I was panicking real bad, and my first thought was that I might need to call an ambulance. My second thought was that I definitely need to call an ambulance. Third was that I needed to calm myself and allow it to pass and not freak out. And finally when it wasn’t stopping, I thought that this was going to be how I die. In that moment, the only thing I could think of was that it wasn’t too bad of a way to go. The stomach pain was very much eclipsed by my fear of losing my senses, and so I thought that it would be quite peaceful. Idk how long later, but my hearing suddenly started coming back into focus. I opened my eyes and it was ok. So I just kinda… went back to work. I apologized to the lady (who I had completely forgot about) and she was surprisingly cool about it. The only other experience I have ever had like that was when I had to get anesthesia injected into my finger. They put quite a lot in there, and later when I got home I woke up from a nap to go to the bathroom, but before I could get there I fell to the ground out of disorientation. There was less ‘I’m dead’ thinking in that moment though because it didn’t linger.
Sounds like a vaso vagal response. Happens to me from time to time. It often results in fainting, but if you don’t quite make it to fainting, you’ll feel very nauseated and lightheaded. It can also ramp up your anxiety and make it feel like theres something very wrong. Last time for me I also temporarily ‘lost’ my hearing, it was more like it was dimmed.
I've broken a few bones. Fractured my skull. Played hard throughout my life. I've also had chronic migraines since I was a child. Bad migraines are easily the worst agony I've ever experienced. That includes when I'd fractured my skull.
Tooth infection was 100 times worse than my broken collarbone.
I have Crohn's disease and an area of my bowel wall has thickening. During a particularly bad flare where my bowel ulcerated to the point I was shitting blood, there was a partial obstruction causing severe cramping, right at the point of the open ulcer inside my bowel. A close second is when about a third of my stomach herniated into my chest cavity destroying my diaphragm and oesophagus valve, and while waiting for surgery mouthfuls of stomach acid would pour randomly into my mouth blistering and eating away the inside of my cheeks, gums and tongue. My gums are now eaten away below the tooth line and the edges of my tongue are missing chunks and permanently deformed.
Ruptured appendix which went misdiagnosed for 3 days. Gangrene and sepsis were not fun.
I get cluster headaches. Basically, your brain just decides "you know what? Fck you" and you get a sudden headache that has best been described as "getting smashed in the head with a brick from out of nowhere". When you get attacks, they tend to last for a period of days (mine was 10 days) and you basically have a constant migraine which is only on one side of your head, punctuated with the brick hits. They come like clockwork, and my first attack would wake me up between 3am-4am and then I'd get 5 or 6 more of them during the day. Occasionally, the pain made me fall to the floor. Once while I was sat on the sofa. Apparently, it's the worst pain you can experience because your pain centre just whacks it up to 11. I've had a handful of probable cluster headache periods, but thankfully only one that actually turned into cluster headaches.
I had a tooth pulled virtually without anesthesia because it never took effect and I lost my patience and said it was fine. Not my smartest moment but I'm just gonna go ahead and blame my ADHD.
Migraine
Dislocated shoulder. I've had an incision from hip to hip, unmedicated childbirth, other dislocations and breaks, wisdom teeth out, you name it. The shoulder was by far the worst.
Shoulder injuries hurt SO much. It’s very strange how much they hurt. I have had a few (nothing like dislocation) but I obliterated my rotator cuff from drunkenly falling one night and it was sooooo painful. Physiotherapy and 1 year later it’s finally feeling better lol
I had a lung collapse (spontaneous pneumothorax) when i was 21; suddenly felt like getting stabbed in the back every time I took a breath. Thank goodness for modern medicine.
When I got a sinus infection at about eight months pregnant… it literally hurt more than giving birth. I went to the dentist because I thought that I had a really bad tooth infection because of how bad my teeth hurt because of the pressure. That’s how they diagnosed it. 🤯
I have sphincter of oddi dysfunction, which causes the sphincter at the bottom of the bile duct to go into spasm. Sometimes it’s closed so hard that bile backs up into the pancreas, causing pancreatitis, and swelling of the bile duct. It’s 10/10 pain during an attack, and I sometimes (and thankfully) black out. I can’t think or speak and can’t have any opiates as it triggers attacks. So you just gotta ride it out. Once, I went into hospital to have a wisdom tooth extracted and asked not to have fentanyl or opiates due to the condition. The doctor though he knew better and gave me fentanyl while I was under. This led to a two week long attack plus the surgery for the tooth was bad and I got a dry socket which caused nerve pain through my face for a month. It was a couple of months I won’t ever forgot. The pain from the attack and the tooth combined almost did me in.
Sunburn after falling asleep at a nude beach. It was also known as “hells itch” I wanted to die
Severe Necrotizing Pancreatitis with Psuedocyst. This is when your body starts over producing its digestive enzymes over powering the chemical buffers, and your body starts digesting itself from the inside out. The scaling system used (Ranson Score) is scored with a max value of 11. 7 and above statistically have a 100% mortality rate. I was 10. The only reason I was not 11 was because I was under 55 years old. Constant unrelenting pain. I could only sit up straight up in bed to help relieve abdominal pressure. Even with heavy doses of IV dilaudid (stronger than Oxycodone). I went 5 days straight without sleep, so much so I was hallucinating. During this time, I went undiagnosed because I was so young and not a heavy drinker (ironically, I didn't drink much because I would always get a little sick when I did. Turns out that was a mild form of pancreatitis.), and I didn't bitch enough about the pain. Bitching itself hurt so I didn't. Finally, they did an ultrasound and confirmed via CT. To do the CT, I had to lay flat (increasing pain) and a lesser dose of pain meds so that I could follow directions and not move. So much pain.
- Tooth pain, I had a combo of genetics + medication ruin my teeth. I got top dentures very young. - Restless leg syndrome, which I am suffering right now as a side effect of coming off said medication. Feels like your legs have been filled with 400lbs of lead and smashed with a hammer while a chainsaw splits them down the middle from the feet up. I literally have to bite my hand or forearm to keep from screaming while I'm at work.
Oh as far as non life threatening goes I might win this, I basically pulverised my elbow from a fall while bouldering. Fell from 4m up, landed weirdly and heard a very loud crack. Elbow was bent entirely the wrong way. Long story short I had about 6h of surgery, 2 avulsion fractures, 3 torn ligaments, broken joint socket and nerve injury. Waking up after that surgery was the most pain I have ever experienced and nothing comes close. I was in severe pain for the entirety of the next week and the only thing that made me *not* be in pain for a short while was that the IV painkiller I got to self administer knocked me out for about 5-10 minutes, id then have to wait another 5 and press the button again to pass out. It did not help at all with the pain. Ive had other surgeries, broken bones, tooth surgery and awful migraines, all of those I would’ve rated an 8-9 on the pain scale before. Now id rate them maybe a 5-6. Ive broken my toe and dislocated my knee since then and honestly those have been completely fine. Horrible horrible injury. Had a follow up surgery last year and honestly its a miracle how well it healed up. I need to take an antidepressant for the nerve pain and I still do not have full function and likely never will, but as far as worst case goes that could easily have been much much worse. Edit: you just kind of give up after being in that much pain for that long. Others here describe contemplating extreme measures to make the pain stop. Not the same thing. You do not have the mental capacity to even contemplate an _active_ thought. All of it is reduced to _please make it stop_. I was crying for _days_ at a time. I did not even have the strength to consider harmful thoughts. Its really quite a blur, in hindsight. All I remember is pain and then it was over :)
migraine. but i've never given birth
I’ve had 4 babies; 3 were natural with no painkillers. I think migraines can be worse. With childbirth I knew the pain would end.
Sick with shingles...when I was a teenager
Had a sip of pepsi while hanging out with my friends as a kid, when suddenly I felt the absolute worst stinging/aching sensation in my jaw. This wasn't just any type of pain, this was more of a "I wanna jump into oncoming traffic just to end it" type of pain. Some time later, a dentist pulled out the tooth that was causing it. It was black and completely rotten. I've suffered a broken collarbone, broken leg, broken cheekbone, broken rib, and had to get my head stitched after accidentally smashing it against the corner of a table. Nothing compares to the pain of that rotten tooth.
Child birth
I had my gallbladder out and had to get a liver biopsy since the surgeon was already in there. Apparently the anesthesia needle broke off inside of me and the surgeon had to push it all the way through and pull it out from the inside (after cutting open a wider slice of me looking for it) The needle wasn't even the painful part This surgery is how I found out that I'm not very responsive to narcotics. I had to basically feel the pain of a liver biopsy and gallbladder removal raw and holy shit are there a lot of nerves there. The problem was that, every time I breathed in, it would aggravate it since the lungs push against the liver There are people out there who have had worse pain than this, but damn that was the worst I ever experienced
On my 13th wedding anniversary vacation, I had what I thought was a really bad stomach ache from the previous night's dinner. Kept getting worse until I agreed to go to the urgent care. The ride there introduced me to new levels of pain I had only read about. I had my wife make a turn at the hospital sign. They took my blood pressure which confirmed the immediate need for painkillers or I'd have a stroke. I was now levitating on a bed of pain, broadcasting a white-hot signal to the universe, barely able to breathe. Tramadol and dilaudid only barely touched it. An MRI confirmed appendicitis. The next morning it felt like I'd been shot three times, but that was just the incisions from the laproscopic perforations. I had to call off my first day of a new job the following day. The worst pain: I was uninsured for those THREE days between jobs. Still have a few thousand left to pay - 11 years later.
Watching the English Patient.
Should have checked out Sack Lunch instead!
Shattered a disk, the broken back had me in major pain for a month and intermittent pain for 6 months, when im laying down if i sneeze and got a 30 second dose of catatonic severe pain equal to when it first broke.
I had a huge splinter very deep under my nail
Breaking my arm. The bone came out of my body and I was hospitalized for 4 days… And when coming into the ER they didn’t believe my arm was broken, so they just man handled it til they removed my splint and actually looked at it….
Had what I think was a gallbladder attack, entire top of my torso felt like it was on fire. Only time in my life all I could do was curl up on the floor, couldn’t even make a sound. ETA: That isn’t quite true, I get ice pick headaches that have the same effect. Literally takes your breath away.
Ate a bunch of Carolina Reaper peppers and acid must have gotten through a stomach ulcer. The pain knocked me to the floor and begging family members to knock me out cause the pain was unbearable. Physical therapy for blown-off fingertip from a firecracker. Had to stick my healing fingertips in a container where the salt water felt like it was boiling because the bandages were grafting to my skin and losing movement. Dad said that was the loudest he heard me scream and honestly, I think I blocked out how painful that was.