the most acute physical pain you've ever experienced

xxp Holy shit that catheter sounds horrific, Fizzles.

i suffered intermittent crippling migraines from infancy until i was 19. all i could do when i got them was lie in bed and wait until they go so bad that i passed out.

When I was ~22 a partner informed me that she had gonorrhea. Was pretty sure we'd always used condoms but there were a few blurry nights...

Went to a doc in the box to get tested, they shoved a long q-tip up my urethra to get a swab. I have never felt that particular kind of pain - entry and then swabbing wherever it hit. All to find out I was clean.

I'll take the glass through my shin, broken wrist bones and nearly severed finger traumas of my past any day over the cluster of migranes I experienced 16 years ago during a particularly stressful period when my life was falling apart. Turn off the lights, hide under covers, press my head between two pillows, and don't move anything more than a millimeter to avoid exacerbating the pain.

I'm not going to get too specific... but it was recovering from major surgery. A 10 year old kid should not want to die....

Worst is seeing the the dizzying dots of color at the center of the visual field, with words on the monitor containing the requisite letters but bereft of meaning, that I experienced 45 minutes before the migraine began in earnest. The third time this happened I took off work in the mid afternoon and *rushed* home to prepare for the pounding to come, but the certain knowledge that one's about to suffer is as painful in its way as the actual pain.

i always wondered if years of really harsh pain did something to my brain. my brain was pretty fucked up as a teen. i'd really like to be able to blame my subsequent behavior in life on SOMETHING.

deep vein thrombosis in my left leg that I ignored for two or three fully occluded weeks until it was life-threatening. nurses popping in and out of the ER bc they were sharing the ultrasound images and wondering how I was alive. there just isn’t a lot of pain like dirty blood flowing in and out of your calf.

Osteomyelitis in spine

My face instead of the ball when messing about with golf clubs (probably the driver) as a kid

How long did that fall lay you up, Tom? Three story falls have a pretty significant mortality rate.

And did medics tell you that it was fortunate that you were drunk (aside from the fact that you wouldn't have done this sober)?

Medics? I woke up, my buddies boggled at me, I went home and showered until the water wasn’t pink, and slept in the rest of the weekend (iirc).

Like I said, Achilles schnoz. My tutelary spirits are industrial grade.

The ledge was below the window, so it was probably more of a 2.5 story drop, plus I was hanging off of it, so really like 20 feet / 6.4 m?

Pshaw

here’s a few more good ones, all from a single crash to the bottom of a half-pipe (skateboarding):

- holding my lower leg together so that the broken tibia that was “tenting” under the skin wouldn’t break through: yay!

- having that same broken tibia and broken fibula realigned in the ER without anesthesia: woohoo!

- for several nights thereafter, up all night in the inpatient ward moaning because orthopedic surgeon who had put me into cast wouldn’t prescribe anything stronger than Tylenol 1-2-3.

- then when I finally for even one instant dozed off from exhaustion at 6 am I would get calf cramps (yeah, those, the ones we all know) that would simultaneously rearrange my broken bones: lovely!

- oh and it turns out the bones were never properly aligned by this surgeon so a week later when X-rayed the verdict was "100% displacement" (the precise wording) and I then had to have a titanium rod inserted into the bone marrow. cool!

- one year later by the way a podiatrist took an x-ray of my foot itself and discovered that I had broken two metatarsals as well in the above accident, and they had healed at odd angles but I was somehow still walking. nifty!

Rough.

Labour
Gallstones, which is like bonus labour

As excruciating as they are, I think I'd pick them over some of the stuff on this thread for sure. Any pain inside your head is the worst kind of pain (toothache, migraines)

sorry to thread-hog, but i'd like to submit one more:

-spending six hours in ER with the worst, most vomit-generating migraine of my life, only to, when finally attended to, be hooked up to an IV drip containing medicine which I had an “adverse reaction” to, in the form of a full-on, out-of-control panic attack (thought I was dying / felt sheer terror / extreme claustrophobia / desperately wanted to escape out of my body, which was in a state that can only inadequately be described as “extreme restlessness”). I was halfway through pulling the IV setup out when a nurse showed up, figured out what was happening, and proceeded to switch the bag to Benadryl. I then went into two indescribable hours on the IV, in which the barely-blunted pain and nausea of the migraine combined with the too-slowly waning restlessness and terror of the adverse reaction intermingled in a groggy, syrupy Benadryl haze. I was discharged in the morning and was “hungover” for a good two days.

Last Spring I woke up with a pain in my back. I knew that pain as I had been through exactly the same shit half a year before. Made bending over and a few other moves very painful for a couple weeks but other than that I could handle it fine. As the day went by the pain started to grow. Like an idiot I am I figured I probably needed to power through it so after taking a hot shower that evening I decided to stretch and bend over until I could touch my toes. It was very painful and I didn't make it, and I would soon realize how bad a mistake it was to try. I went and sat on my bed to put my socks on and the pain while bending over was already hard to tolerate but of course I insisted until I managed to do it. At this point I felt exhausted and I was hurting badly. I went to the main room where my wife and my kid were and I headed toward a chair to sit down. As I start to bend my knees to sit I feel this fucking intense pain in my back, like it's super tense and it's going to break in two at any moment, and there's absolutely nothing I can do: trying to get back up makes the pain go more intense, and so does trying to sit down. So I'm kinda stuck half-sitting half-standing, and without even realizing it right away I start screaming from the pain. Wife gets up to help me but she has no idea what to do and neither do I. Eventually I probably grabbed her arm and leaned on her to lay down on the couch. As soon as I was laying down most of the pain went away. I stayed a few minutes like that to calm down then I tried to change position and I realized laying down was the only position my body would accept. Just raising my torso a bit made the feeling that my back is going to break in two come back. I had had a dislocated knee before (twice, actually) and that was super painful but this thing in my back? Easily 50 times worse. It hurt so much I felt like crying. So for like 2 full days I couldn't sit or get up or anything. I had to eat laying down, piss in a bottle and pray I wouldn't have to poop. Everytime I tried to change position the terrible pain came back. After two days I was able to get up and walk very clumsily but sitting down was still impossible. We had doctors come to my place but none of them were really sure that I had. Could be this, could be that, etc. Got back to a quasi-normal state after a week but to this day I still feel a pain and I can't bend over fully.

I should add that in addition to the pain it was also super scary. For two very long days I had no idead if I could ever walk again.

They cut open my guts a few years ago for a colon resectioning. Waking up in the recovery room, shivering from the extreme cold, and feeling like those metal staples holding my belly together were about to snap out, one by one. That was the worst pain I had ever felt.

Until a little while later. As the nurses and orderlies were moving me from the stretcher into my hospital bed, I suddenly became aware I had a catheter installed. And when I felt it "bounce off the walls" as I was getting slightly jostled, that's when I felt the worst, most acute, physical pain in my life. Still swear that thing was made of glass.

Along those lines and from what others have written here, I have just about eliminated drinking anything brown our of fear of getting a kidney stone sometime around 2030.

Also have never broken a bone except for my nose. Only twice for me though.

Are you a Scottish + Huguenot mutt as well?

No, man. Pleasant Plains. Though Huguenot is just two stops away.

Whatever.

get well soon, mark e

:-(

That too.

came here to post "no bullet ant no credibility" but see that someone has beaten me to it

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

― Hey Bob (Scik Mouthy), Friday, October 13, 2017 9:51 AM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink"

that's....literally what happened

for me it would have to post-operative pain

When I was 8 for some reason one of my testicles decided to disappear into my abdomen, I think someone might have kicked me in the bollocks but that could be a coincidence. I just remember that I was at my grandparents house when I told my mum about it. I could feel it next to my hip bone. This is the only time I've ever stayed overnight in a hospital, they had to cut my scrotum open to get it back in again. Obviously I was anaesthetised when they did that, but it hurt like shit for ages afterwards and the scar got infected (although I didn't tell anybody about this because it was too embarrassing, so it can't have been that bad an infection because it went away eventually - I only know looking back that it was an infection).

To this day, Radio Gaga by Queen makes me cross my legs. (it was 1984 and that song was on the hospital radio a lot)

All this groin area talk reminds me of the horror stories I heard from dudes who had gotten fixed. When it was my turn to take the wife off the pill I shaved as best I could (wasn’t good enough) and after the procedure I went home and sat in a recliner with frozen peas and an ice pack in my boxers for hours and hours and hours.

I recovered in no time. Cold works. Use cold.

tbh I did think about getting a vasectomy but I found the idea pretty horrifying thanks to the above.

urethral catheter for sure

breaking my arm was a more grievous insult to the system, to be sure, but my experience of that was kind of going into shock and not experiencing the pain consciously that much -- i didn't even realize my arm was broken!

whereas when they put that catheter in, you are THERE for that.

Oh yeah, my vasectomy hurt pretty bad, I remember that now. I may have been under-sedated -- I remember it felt like he was pulling about 2-3 feet of vas deferens out and winding it around some chopsticks before actually cutting it. Both sides. "I need you to relax." "You fucking relax, this hurts!"

Still, stepping on that lit cigarette is what came to mind from the thread question.

Strange that yours has been the only burn-related response.

Surely nothing beats extensive 3rd degree burns?

actually I did have toothache once randomly. No idea why, my teeth are fine </British> and it never happened again, but jesus fuck that hurt

felt like he was pulling about 2-3 feet of vas deferens out and winding it around some chopsticks before actually cutting it

https://i.imgur.com/deMiXWm.gif

Has anyone here boxed or done mma or the like? Blows to the liver can be absolutely devastating. The pain takes a couple of seconds to kick in, but once it does, you just collapse and want to die.

I have no first-hand experience of this, btw.

WilliamC your description of the vas deferens extraction is excruciating just to read.

Then my work here is done. *tapdances out, stage left*

Yeah, you had an incompetent doctor. That’s ridiculous. May I ask what year this was?

1990

got a handjob from a girlfriend with press-on nails. you can connect the dots

serious answer though, I've been fortunate (*knocks on wood*) to not suffer any serious painful injuries. my top 3 isn't really that impressive...

*split my head open at age 7 on a swing set. Pushed it up as high as it could go, stood in front of it, and told my brother for whatever reason "this is about to be a big ceremony!". let it go and I was right, but for reasons different than I intended. The pain was p much over in a moment though.

*had an enlarged spleen due to healing mono and was in an (unsanctioned) production of Reservoir Dogs as Mr Pink. we hadn't yet blocked the scene where Mr Pink separates Mr White and Mr Blonde as they're about to tear each other apart, and Mr White weighed about 80 pounds more than me. We attempted to run it raw and he steamrolled me into a wall. was worried I'd ruptured the spleen but turned out to just have bruised myself in that area.

*had a week long, migraine-esque headache that was bad enough that I went to get an MRI as it wasn't improving. turned out to be bad case of chronic sinusitis (which I'd never had previously).

see? nothing impressive....some of the posts upthread made me nauseous just reading, hats off to everybody who had to endure shit like that
*

One of the most fascinating pains I've ever felt was from having my achilles surgically detached, the bone shaved down, the tendon reattached and the whole situation being encased in an old-fashioned plaster cast. I guess it helped my walking and saved some shoe leather and it was worth it, but

It was a different kind of pain. I've had broken bones, corporal punishment, fallen on my face and rearranged my teeth, diverticulitis, sex headaches, and other interesting forms of pain, but something about that particular sharp deep pain that the pills could only ease but not erase is the one that stick in my mind.

It's still no big deal and I can barely imagine it now, because the brain and memory and so forth. I haven't had the other foot done and probably won't.

Sidebar from the opioid discussion on the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries thread:

A couple years ago, my wife had outpatient surgery to fix her deviated septum from a broken nose she suffered in childhood. Because she was being prescribed pain meds for her recovery, we were given a mandatory lecture on opioids by a nurse prior to the surgery. It lasted 10-15 minutes and was very stern and finger-waggy. My wife and I are grown-assed people who are aware of the dangers of addiction, but we nodded along. My wife wasn't overly concerned because she assumed that the pain wouldn't be any worse than the incident that broke her nose in childhood. We would later find that this wasn't to be the case.

Once she came out of surgery, we were given a Vicodin prescription that they assured us would last us through the weekend until her follow-up appointment on Tuesday (hers was the last surgery on a Friday afternoon). A few hours later, whatever they had given her during surgery had worn off and she began to experience excruciating pain in her teeth, so she took the recommended dose of Vicodin. An hour later, her situation had not improved. She likened it to getting dentist drilled on all of her upper teeth at once. We contacted the doc through his answering service and he suggested doubling up on the dose. He said that it might have been nerve-related pain due to swelling.

Unfortunately, the pain continued. She used up her Vicodin scrip two days early, but just resigned herself to suffering. She did not ask for more medicine at her follow-up. The pain gradually cleared up over the next couple weeks.

So I'm just curious, did they cheese out on her meds because of the opioid epidemic? Or was there really nothing better that they could have done?

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.