the most acute physical pain you've ever experienced

When I had an agonising kidney stone I was told by a nurse that its the worst pain a man can feel. Don't know how true this is, or how one could measure such a thing, just hope I don't ever experience anything worse.

Infection of the middle-ear. I wanted to drive kebab skewers into my eyes.

No contest: trigeminal neuralgia. Which I have. It's not called "the suicide disease" for nothing. It's like being stabbed in the face with knives and tasered at the same time. I really don't know any pain like it. Like a monster in your head trying to knife it's way out.

I'm extremely fortunate that I've found medication that practically made me pain-free. Others aren't so lucky.

When I was between the ages of 12-14, I used to get crippling migraines just about once a week. I would get this pulsating pain in my head that would grow more severe over a few hours, extreme light sensitivity, and I would hallucinate these blinding, flashing lights of my own (the flashing would start first, that's how I knew I would get one). The only way to fix them: lay down in complete darkness for two hours, lie down on the bathroom floor for 30 minutes, vomit, then go to sleep. When I would wake up, I would feel mostly better. I had medication that I would take if i felt one coming on that would theoretically make my migraines less severe, but really all the medicine did was make me vomit a little sooner.

I haven't had a migraine since I was 14. I have no idea why these migraines stopped as suddenly as they started. Maybe the blood vessels in my head reacted poorly to puberty? But anyway, I'm glad they're gone for the time being--it would be hard to hold down a job if I had to leave and immerse myself in darkness for hours at a time once a week.

I have tinnitus that comes and goes. I sometimes wonder whether continuous mild annoyance is better or worse than temporary but excruciating pain.

Pneumonia aged 18, completely unable to breath without intense physical pain in one lung for 24hrs or so.

life being absurd and capricious it's already hard enough to keep truckin'. i've always been fascinated by the question of how a chronic painful condition would affect my outlook/basic philosophy. strangely it'd probably be for the better

I had a collapsed lung in college. At first it just felt like my back was particularly sore that day, which wasn't a surprise because it was spring break and I was drinking a lot and sleeping on couches. The pain increased throughout the day until it was very bad that night, progressing to something that felt like bad heartburn. I was the only one of our friends who was over 21 though, so I still made a liquor store run for everybody, collapsing on the ground once in pain on the way back. I STILL just thought it was very bad heartburn though until the next afternoon when I started feeling numb in one arm. Someone pointed out that was a symptom of a heart attack, so I finally went to the hospital where they admitted me for emergency surgery.

THE PAIN: when the anesthesia wore off after surgery I woke up screaming. All I knew was pain. The doctors rushed in and instructed me about the morphine drip button and I quickly went back under. For the next few months I was in a lot of pain as I recovered, but never as bad as it was during that minute. Whenever I consider whether a particular course of action is going to lead to pain for me, *that* pain is what I fear.

When I had an agonising kidney stone I was told by a nurse that its the worst pain a man can feel. Don't know how true this is, or how one could measure such a thing, just hope I don't ever experience anything worse.

― Ward Fowler, Friday, October 13, 2017 9:10 AM

I had a kidney stone about 5 years ago that gave me several weeks of discomfort culminating in about an hour of horribly intense pain. I had to rush out of my office and drive myself about 10 miles to the emergency room. I really wasn't sure if I'd make it, I was very worried that I was just going to pass out while driving 70 mph on the highway. The annoying thing is that while I was in the ER waiting room feeling like I could keel over at any moment, the pain just abruptly evaporated, but of course I still got to pay the full ER and CT scan bills. They found more stones in my kidneys, and there have been a few brief times since where I thought one was moving, but luckily I haven't had to experience this again so far.

I've had worse injuries but I bang my toes into shit all the fucking time like an idiot and it hurts worse than anything

Dislocated and immediately relocated kneecap. Like someone had pulled my kneecap off sideways and then rammed it back again.

i bit a hole through my tounge doing the long jump in like 7th grade. don't ask

i've always been fascinated by the question of how a chronic painful condition would affect my outlook/basic philosophy. strangely it'd probably be for the better

Possibly! I was speaking once to the doctor who runs the tinnitus research dept at University of Cambridge. I said something like "I hate having tinnitus but weirdly I feel like it's made me a better person" and he said that was quite common, that chronic conditions made people "sadder but wiser".

The upside I guess is that it's chronic annoyance, rather than chronic pain. I'm actually part-paralysed in my left hand (after the bathroom window incident) and that is *way* less irritating than the tinnitus. Sometimes you end up thinking idiotic things like, "You know, I'd be happy to lose this hand altogether if it stopped the ear ringing." (These thoughts pass though.)

Physical pain? Short-term I still remember the time I had my hand slammed in a car door and instinctively started screaming in pain at the top of my lungs. Once they opened the door there was no lasting damage, though. Gallstones were also really bad and longer-lasting. They put me on painkillers and it still was unbearably painful until they put me into surgery and took my gallbladder out.

My depression at its worst has been more painful than any physical pain I've ever experienced, though.

when I was a teenager I ran down a grassy knoll in Scotland and tripped over a curb at the bottom of the hill, forcing me to roll down a forest and ultimately crash into a traffic divider. one whole side of my body was fucked, so probably that

Definitely toothache, unimaginable agony that i would have done anything to stop, including almost pulling out the tooth with pliers. It blows my mind how painful toothache is and how the remedies don't really sort it out much, although in later life i discovered the classic Codeine and ice cubes metod. There's a bit in Martin Amis's autobiog 'Experience' where he goes to see a friend who had been accidentally caught up in a random armed robbery and shot in the stomach. He asks the fela "What did it feel like?" and he says "I've had worse toothaches.". So toothache; officially confirmed as worse than being shot.

I've had worse injuries but I bang my toes into shit all the fucking time like an idiot and it hurts worse than anything

― Erotic Wolf (crüt), Friday, October 13, 2017 9:44 AM (twenty-five minutes ago)

I have such an outsized fear of this that I wear shoes almost 24/7 except when in bed or the shower.

wolf that's OTM

Physical pain? Short-term I still remember the time I had my hand slammed in a car door and instinctively started screaming in pain at the top of my lungs. Once they opened the door there was no lasting damage, though.

I slammed my daughter's finger in my trunk a couple years back. I'm sure that's her most acute physical pain story. Also surprised that it turned out to just be an ice and ibuprofen kind of issue. Apparently this is not always the case.

I've had worse injuries but I bang my toes into shit all the fucking time like an idiot and it hurts worse than anything

― Erotic Wolf (crüt), Friday, October 13, 2017 9:44 AM (twenty-five minutes ago)

There's an aspect to toe-stubbing that might be unique -- the concomitant rage at yourself for letting it happen

Sitting on the floor with toddler in my lap, turned and pinched a nerve in my back. It hurt, but then the pain kept building, to the point where all I could do was lie flat on my back. Any movement, every breath, was excruciating pain at the base of my spine. My wife finally had to call paramedics. My only ride in an ambulance!

xp Nah I get that if I bang my head on something

Cosign pneumonia and toothache, I have to say the initial sudden onset of back pain/spasms is pretty nasty too. Toothache maybe the worst of those.

One painful accident I had once was when I stood up on a tower scaffold under a long strand of 12 gauge galvanized wire that was hanging from the ceiling. It is the extremely tough wire that holds up suspended ceilings, so it is very painful when you unwittingly raise your head into some. It was one of them injuries that caused a huge flash of initial pain + much profuse bleeding, but ultimately just left a tiny gash on my head. When the site manager gave my "wound" the once over for the accident book he was like: All that fucking noise just for that little scratch.

lower back muscle spasms

I kinda want to start one of those dumb billion-post hypothetical threads. Would you be without physical pain for the rest of your life in return for... something. Haven't thought it out tho.

Would prob vote yes, pain sucks

"Would you be without physical pain if it meant you would never feel happy"

i've always been fascinated by the question of how a chronic painful condition would affect my outlook/basic philosophy. strangely it'd probably be for the better

Not sure if it changed my outlook or basic philosopy. Trigeminal neuralgia still hasn't been pinned down, the root cause is still not known, and if it's just bad luck I am kinda ok with that?

It do think it raises the threshold: tooth ache was the worst for me as well. Until I got this (I just got it out of the blue). I have had bad tooth ache after I got this condition but it's been much more bearable ever since. Knowing there's something way worse it didn't hurt as much. Which is a plus in a way.

More thread derail here: there is a rare condition where infants are born without the ability to feel pain. They never know when they've hurt themselves and never experience negative feedback from physical harmful to teach them to avoid it. Burns, bruises, cuts, broken bones go mostly unnoticed. It isn't pretty.

Yeah I'm aware of that. Let's say in my deal with the devil the pain sense still exists, it just isn't painful

i have been extremely lucky with this sort of thing. worst things i can remember are minor burns and electric shocks, car door being slammed on my fingers, bicycle crash which ended with my chin split open and road rash everywhere.

I've only had one broken bone and it was a tiny fracture near my elbow that honestly didn't hurt much as long as I didn't move it.

BUT. When I was a kid, maybe 9, I was playing baseball with my friends in the front yard and in a heroic effort to get someone out, I snagged a grounder and dove to slap my non-gloved hand on the base. The good news is, my hand got there first and the runner was out. The bad news was, the kid running to the base trod full force on my naked thumb. The worse news is, we were using some flat garden stones as bases, so my thumb got crushed between a foot and a rock.

BUT. The even worse news is, when I went screaming into the house with my thumb swelling up like a hot air balloon, my parents took a look at it and said, "Oh, you need to reduce the pressure on that." Theoretically, this is a valid medial response -- fingernails and toe nails constrain the swelling of an injured digit, which can lead to intense pain, as was indeed the case. However. The home remedy that was applied was as follows: One of my parents, probably my dad, restrained me and held my hand out straight (me crying in agony the whole time). The other parent, probably my mom, proceeded to use a match and rubbing alcohol to sterilize a sewing needle, and then pushed the needle straight .... through ... my swollen ... unbelievably sensitive ... thumbnail ... into the flesh below. I screamed. And screamed. And ... nothing happened. No geyser of blood to relieve the swelling and the pressure. Nothing. So now I had a hugely swollen thumb AND a punctured thumbnail. I'm not sure which hurt more, it was just a giant throbbing locus of all the pain in the universe.

After that, somewhat sheepishly, my parents gave me a big icepack and just waited for the swelling to go down on its own.

I still love my parents, btw. But I have promised my children I will never under any circumstances push hot needles through their thumbnails.

"Would you be without physical pain if it meant you would never feel happy"

― "The" Blink-182 (wins)

but what if pain is the only thing keeping us ALIVE, man

Dental surgery on an infected root canal. Two hours in the chair, the most painful part of which consisted of the dentist scraping infected crap out of my root canal. Every time her scraping went deeper than the numbed area, I shouted with the pain, she re-numbed me, waited a couple of minutes, and the whole mess started again. I would rather have no teeth than go through that again.

Definitely the worst part was the anticipation. And the pain. The pain was the worst part. Apart from the anticipation.

my dentists really put the no in novocaine

I had a compound fracture on my right wrist in second grade. Don't know if it was because I was still such a small person or what, but I remember in the hour or so after the initial action that caused the fracture, I wanted to take deeper breaths, but couldn't, as the body movements necessary to facilitate the depth of the breaths I wanted would caused a shooting pain from my wrist up to my shoulder. So, in addition to being unable to move my right hand and/or arm without pain, having a constant dull ache in my wrist, and being stuck at the babysitter's loud, uncomfortable house until my mother could pick me up, I was having these short, wimpy, totally unsatisfying breaths.

And then, when I got into the emergency room and they diagnosed that I did have a fracture, they set my arm in a splint, which had this thing that they wrapped into the splint that started out warm in temperature, but eventually increased in temperature to a point where it actually magnified the constant pain in my wrist. I don't think I slept at all that night because of how bad it hurt.

I've gone through oral surgeries, fallen off ladders, heavy alcohol dependence withdrawal, and still experience neck-based tension migraines. But that sleepless night with my entire arm just seemingly getting hotter and hotter on top of already throbbing pain still stands out as the most significant.

Was expecting a few more (or any!) answers of "giving birth".

Shingles

Absolutely no question whatsoever. Took me all day to think of that though. This thread is tough going.

When I was twenty I was in a car accident. I had all the tendons in my right foot severed, chunks of glass in my biceps and neck, permanent nerve damage to my left hand, and open fracture of the right femur. To repair the femur the orthopedist put in a long pin and sawed off a graft of my pelvic bone to help stimulate bone growth. I felt like I was being held together by stitches. The pelvic graft was absurdly painful, post-surgery. Some of my wounds became infected. Several times when the nurses picked me up out of my bed to bring me to another part of the hospital, the pain of all these broken parts getting twisted and pulled out of (relative) repose was so overwhelming that I simply passed out in their arms.

When Ward Fowler's nurse told him kidney stones were 'the worst pain a man can feel' I took it as implying that childbirth is probably the worst pain humans endure

the sting of the bullet ant, the warrior wasp, and the tarantula hawk (a wasp that hunts - oh, you guessed it) are supposedly the most painful things any animal can encounter and survive.

i had surgery for an inguinal hernia which required incision to my groin. i learned afterwards that virtually all bodily movement involves the muscles there and so i spent the next couple of weeks in bed unable to move without great pain.

when i was feeling a bit better i noticed that something was amiss and went back to the surgeon. he speculated what it might be and told me to lie down. then, without warning me about exactly what he was doing and without anesthetic, he stuck a needle into my scrotum several times. it was not pleasant.

but i feel lucky to have not endured some of the horror stories upthread.

The Sateré-Mawé people of Brazil use intentional bullet ant stings as part of their initiation rites to become warriors.[29] The ants are first rendered unconscious by submerging them in a natural sedative, and then hundreds of them are woven into gloves made of leaves (which resembles a large oven mitt), stingers facing inward. When the ants regain consciousness, a boy slips the gloves onto his hands. The goal of this initiation rite is to keep the glove on for a full 5 minutes. When finished, the boy's hand and part of his arm are temporarily paralyzed because of the ant venom, and he may shake uncontrollably for days. The only "protection" provided is a coating of charcoal on the hands, supposedly to confuse the ants and inhibit their stinging. To fully complete the initiation, however, the boys must go through the ordeal a total of 20 times over the course of several months or even years.[30]

second most painful thing in my life was when I was a kid, maybe 9 or 10? and my foot slipped off the wet boards of a lazily constructed boat pier on a lake where we were vacationing with family friends, and my whole right leg went straight down between two soaking planks of wood, basically flaying my knee and part of my thigh. the main thing I recall after that was consigning myself to lie in the back of our van outside so I wouldn't bother anyone else while I cried out in pain for hours. There really wasn't anything to do that would help, they don't make band-aids big enough for that.

That's about it for me; I've broken my nose 3 times which probably is obvious in retrospect if you've seen my WDYLL pics, but that doesn't hurt that much, you just pass out and wake up with a bigger schnoz that also happens to be adjustable for a few days. I've been extremely lucky. (knocks on wood)

There are women who have given birth who have also had kidney stones, and they often say kidney stones are worse.

Anyway, I had a stone once and I think about it almost everyday. It was too big to pass, but I had about three immobilizing attacks before I was scheduled to have it smashed to bits with ultrasonic waves. The first attack I didn't know what was going on and thought I was dying. Our first kid was barely a toddler, so we had to hand her off to a neighbor at night while my wife rushed me to the hospital. Second two involved taking Vicodin and lying face-down immobilized on the bed for hours, teetering between extreme pain and borderline unconsciousness.

I drink a lot of water now.

back spasms involving my neck, during which i could basically not move at all without getting electric shocks down my limbs (and tongue?!)

that was so over the top that when i think about it i can't really conjure it up. i can and often do conjure up thoughts of tearing ankle ligaments, however

these things were unpleasant but good lord you people. be well

I've heard all kinds of stories about the sort of dietary habits that supposedly can lead to kidney stones, and in conclusion, I've determined my kidneys just don't know how to make stones. (knocks on wood again)

how did it happen three times, tom?

Post hernia recovery, definitely. Even worse than getting a spike rammed through my chest with minimal local anaesthetic after I'd had a collapsed lung.

Physically, I've been relatively lucky my whole life. So: Europe's "The Final Countdown."

Had to get a massive cyst next to my shoulder blade lanced/squeezed and it was so infected that they couldn't really fully anesthetize it. That was pretty bad.

#1. About six years ago I went out for a bike ride and woke up in an ER with severe facial and moderate spinal injuries from having been hit by a car, My whole body was bruised/damaged from two collisions (windshield and asphalt) and being tangled up around the bike frame. I didn't go back to work for a month and it was the most debilitated I have ever been. It was hard because the pain was everywhere--it hurt to sit, walk, stand, breathe...everything.

#2. Two or three times I've had dental nerves get infected and die without treatment. (I didn't have health insurance at the time.) If this has never happened to you, let me assure you this is a "if I cut my whole head off, would it stop the pain?" level of experience.

I took Advil for all of the above, no opioids because they give me vertigo. The Advil might have ruined my stomach though--I've had food issues since after #1.

I had the same pain in my teeth as peace's wife due to a sinus infection. I was given Vicodin, which did nothing. After three days of not eating and sleeping I took Aleve which helped I guess reduce the swelling. Either that or the infection had run its course. The relief I felt after that was incredible.

My mom had a femur break and subsequent surgical repair involving a metal rod being driven into the bone etc, with a recommended 4-6 month recovery period. She took the opioids they gave her, as recommended for the pain, which I understand was significant. She still ended up addicted, which I know because she called me after she finished the meds and said she was worried because she seemed to be getting a lot sicker, and then she told me the symptoms and I was like, "Mom, you might want to sit down for this."

For a little while she was really shocked and ashamed that her prescribed meds had made her "an addict," I know she felt like it reflected on her somehow.

My dad had a neverending series of back and neck surgeries, pain from what he thought was scar tissue and another back surgery scheduled. He was in the hospital (military) for a non-related serious illness and was there for several months. During that time a different group of doctors took a look at all the drugs he had been prescribed over the decade and were supposedly shocked. The drugs were stopped and his back pain disappeared. No more surgery.

My sister was in three car collisions within the space of three years (none of them her fault) and her body was so fucked up that the amount of opiods you could take would certainly make her an addict. She has them but opted to have an IMPLANT stimulator for her pain. It's in her back and it buzzes and stuff. I felt it, it's like she's a cyborg or something.

hey, peace, man, I don’t think I could answer your q unless I knew where you were at, and then even if I were familiar with local laws and the prescribing guidelines of your health provider a lot would depend on your doctor’s judgement and approach to treatment.

unfortunately what you described doesn’t sound like an unusual situation, ime. The nature and intensity of pain your wife was experiencing was obviously unexpected and frightening, and is a terrible thing to go through. If I had to guess I would say that her doctor leaned into the fact that she had a common procedure with a well-established recovery period, and that the pain would dissipate even if it presented at a high number and continued for longer than expected. It seems like this turned out to be true, though what was obviously missing was proper patient education about the nature of pain, reasonable expectations for how it may manifest, and strategies for mitigation without available rx. The pre-op lecture was obviously totally inadequate, and much of both our current treatment and dependency protocols depend on garbage like that thrust upon overworked and undertrained support staff.

Send post for the moment; I’ll reply more to this and other posts when time allows.

You're answer is much appreciated, sciatica! We're in Maryland.

btw, on the topic of your user name, I had some pretty serious irritation of the sciatic nerve last summer/fall due to what I believe was a bout of piriformis syndrome. Since we're on the acute physical pain thread and all. Shooting electric pain from my hip all the way down my leg. Seriously limited my daytime activities like standing or walking or sitting and frequently woke me up at night.

(that is not my most acute, but it's definitely up there)

I got a couple:

Herniated disc at C5-C6 last year. Numbness down my left arm. By the time I walked five minutes from my office to my car my neck and shoulder would be on fire and I was ready to cry.

Broke the tip of my pinkie on my dominant hand back 90 degrees playing basketball. My friend couldn't drive stick, so I had to drive us to his place so he could drive me to the emergency room. Shit was throbbing when I got there and they told me I had to sign a form. I tried signing and couldn't hold the pen. Just started laughing from the pain.

When I was in 6th grade, I started having knee pain. Eventually we realized that my leg was growing crooked, so during spring break in 7th grade I had surgery to correct it: they broke my leg, straightened it, added a piece of bone from the bone bank to my knee, and inserted two 3-4 inch metal screws. Full leg cast for 2-3 months with crutches. The idea was that as the knee healed the pins would be forced out. So the day they removed the cast, I looked down at the atrophied, shedding skin, funky ass leg, with 3/4 of an inch of metal sticking out and started yelling my head off. Only one of the pins didn't come out, so they gave me a general anesthetic and pulled them out with pliers.

those are good, those will take some beating tbh

aside from the pneumonia upthread, i did my anterior cruciate ligament at a five a side a few years back and boy did i fuckin roar until they put the gas in me

i tell a lie. it was iirc the collateral

Talk of opioid addiction, which I have some experience with, reminds me of the constipation that would result, and yeah that is definitely some of the most pain I've ever felt. Maybe the worst.

When I was abusing the drugs, I knew I should be taking heaps of stool softeners, fiber, and laxatives. But there was one period when I just couldn't be arsed. I remember the day of reckoning, when I could no longer ask or force my body to give me just one more day. It was time. I remember screaming bloody murder.

gallstones, about 16 years ago less than 6 months after i had moved to US permanently
pain was so bad it made me vomit, ended up lying on the bathroom floor because it was the only place that felt remotely comfortable

went to ER where they triaged me for what felt like days, lying on a guerney next to an addict in extreme withdrawal & both of us crying and or barfing in harmony at many points throughout the wee hours of the morning

they finally saw to me & said i had gallstones, i could let them pass naturally but maybe have more attacks, or they could remove them with lasers
i demanded that they get the fuckers out of me

THEN they finally gave me the good drugs ie demerol & that relief was maybe the most magical feeling ever. so much so that i was a bit scared of it.

sidebar to that: after the surgery, they gave me vicodin which gave me constipation & then hemorrhoids as result of the constipation, and of course they also gave me antibiotics which gave me the worst case of thrush i ever had. i was almost hysterical after a week, i was so miserable. couldnt hardly walk, sit, stand & would just lie face down on the couch & cry.
kinda funny now but ugh it was the worst of times

i don't know if this even counts as physical pain, but i will revise my above answer by at least mentioning what an incredibly awful experience benzo withdrawal was for me and how lucky i feel to this day to have somehow managed to survive it

A test for checking my fertility. Thght my belly was going to explode. I threw up afterwards. Year later I had contractions. Same feeling. Lol. It's painful but I think my tolerance is higher than I thought.

Most pain pales next to migraine attacks. It just makes me so depressed.

when I got my wisdom teeth out there were complications, namely three dry sockets. not really sure where this fits into the pain scale compared to other things but I have a distinct memory of waking up at like 4:30 am in the most excruciating pain I've ever experienced because the painkillers (I think hydrocodone) the doctor had prescribed stopped working

nathom was that the thing with the dye?

Yes! The doctor said:"oh now worst part is over" I knew it wasn't. I felt so silly cause I was moaning. Lol. I felt like I was in Alien. But tummy burster instead of chest burster. Haha

Dislocated and immediately relocated a kneecap while playing football. The intensity was brief but the throbbing after pain lasted.

who relocated it?

nathom I had that too, worried shitless about it beforehand because I read so many accounts like yours. but I barely felt a thing! ? sorry yours was so awful.

My mum warned it me it was the worst thing ever. Afterwards I thght: ok, my pain level is higher than I thght.

It was painful but it was short. So 🤷🏼‍♀️
I think pain that is short is much better than being in constant pain. Because it wears you down.

I went through a two week period of acute pancreatitis post-gallbladder removal. That led to my very first non-overnight hospital stay and a lifelong battle with postcholecystectomy syndrome. Anyway, I think it was during that two-week period when I was a few weeks shy of thirty that I began to lose all my faith in a higher power, such was the intensity of my pain. Several years later I underwent reconstructive surgery on my upper arms to correct some deformities I was born with, but had my pain poorly managed and have suffered chronic pain from that ever since. During the immediate post-recovery period (where I was coping with the grand total of 100 stitches on both arms, 50 per) I was in so much pain that I had to rely on a meditation podcast to help me fall asleep. Those were the two most painful incidents I've ever lived through.

BTW, correction above: it's not "lifelong", I know. It's just been ever since the gallbladder removal, so about ten years.

Hugs Dee

Hugs Dee

So sorry I'm only seeing this now, sweet Nath; all my love to you, sweetheart. Anyway, I feel like my chronic pain issues have toughened me up and made me a better human, as cheesy and clichéd as that sounds.