the most acute physical pain you've ever experienced

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.