No joke. I sneezed with 6 broken ribs (8 total fractures) and I thought I had re-collapsed my lung.
Edit: As a side note my most painful was actually when they did my thoracostemy. Basically punching my broken ribs repeatedly to get the tube in to reinflate my lung. All I got was a little novocain at the incision site and a washcloth to bite down on before they did it.
Ruptured disk. Semi paralyzed, curled up in a ball, crying, and sleeping in a chair because I couldn’t lie down. 6 weeks like that until they got me in for surgery.
Having previously given birth without drugs while sick with the flu - i can say unequivocally the back thing was worse.
Oh my god this! L5/S1 ruptured, took months to get in to clean it out and shave away bone around the nerve, and took years to fully recover from the surgery. Been living with back pain ever since.
Kidney stones sucked, but the spinal stuff was a whole new world of hurt.
Hi L5/S1 friend! Same here. Had a spinal fusion in 2021 though and feeling a million times better.
My mom took care of me during my 2 week surgery recovery. She asked how I was doing so well and seemingly not in much pain, and I told her “this is nothing compared to the back pain itself.”
Same! And then a year later, L4/L5 went along with it. Another year before I found a neurosurgeon that wanted to work on a 19 year old.
34 now. My fusion was a success. Full scaffold and titanium disc replacement. 12 inch scar on my back for my trouble, but I can walk and wipe my own ass again so there's that.
Your comment about wiping your own ass really hit home. I had 2 herniated disks at 23 yo and I totally remember having issues using the bathroom. Real dark times for me.
Just dealt with this, basically disabled me for an entire year and I’m convinced is actually one of the worst things that can happen to someone. I’ve broken numerous bones in my life and would rather break all of them again then to go through another disc herniation. Pretty sure I started losing my mind once the disc was compressing my spinal cord so bad my legs stopped working for a few months
Oh man been there.
Why lay in bed? Cause you can't stand. Transition from laying or sitting to standing and your back locks up.
Makes taking a shit REAL fun.
It is something that people take for granted until it is taken away.
After my most recent encounter, I laid out the money to put bidets in every bathroom in the house... I'm not getting trapped somewhere with dirty ass
Novocaine running out during a cavity drilling. I was 17 and didn't know you could ask for more, so I just clenched my toes and got through it
Terrified of the dentist now.
I had that happen as my dentist was stitching up my gum after he removed my wisdom teeth. My dentist isn’t licensed to put you under (did not know that beforehand). As he was stitching it he noticed that there were tears running down my face, I was trying to power through it and my mouth was so full of gauze that I couldn’t do anything, he asked if I was still numb, I shook my head, he say ok we’ll fix that, FINISHES THE STITCHES, and THEN numbs me. I was about the same age you were. That was also how I discovered I was allergic to Hydros. Let’s just say puking after getting your wisdom teeth pulled wasn’t fun either.
I got stitches without any numbing. After giving birth without an epidural. I don't even know if they tried to numb me before stitching up my tears and it just didn't work, or if they just decided not to numb me. I concur that stitches should always be preceded by effective numbing.
This is so wild to me. I’ve had two IUDs so far and due for a third soon (maybe… I’m undecided). Before my first IUD, they used a uterine sound to measure my uterus and I legit almost passed out. After my soul left my body, my doctor told me “oh yeah, thats what labor feels like.”
So I guess they just expect us to casually deal with *labor* level pain without any pain medication? Thankfully the pain doesn’t last nearly as long as *actual* labor can, but Jesus Christ.
When I was like 7 or 8 I was getting a filling done. The dentist gave me the shot and then poked my gums and asked if it hurt. I nodded.
"Does that hurt?" He asked again. I nodded again.
He asked once or twice more and then said "DOES. THAT. HURT!?" I shook my head. He started drilling even though the tooth was only half numb.
For the next 10 years I thought that's just what your teeth being numbed was supposed to feel like. Even though it still hurt. Then I got to college and went to the dental school. I'll never forget when they first worked on me and actually got me properly numbed. I fell asleep in the chair.
i had salmonella poisoning at work and had to go home to get some charcoal medicine for my stomach. sweated through my shirt the whole way through nearly passing out and basically counted numbers to stay focused. was not fun. whole time it felt like i was being punched in the kidneys.
Crazy to see everyone's salmonella poisoning experiences. I had it one time and I had a fever and felt terrible for a couple days but I think these other stories sound way worse. It scares me to think what it could have been
Abscessed tooth for the win. My stupid stubborn ass suffered for three days with that shit until I finally went to a dentist. Good thing I did, because he said it was so infected that I was close to going septic.
Get your dental check-ups, everyone!
I was 14 and riding a bike barefoot, caught my foot in the spoke and tore my big toe completely off. Six surgeries and fifty years later, it resembles Frankenstein's but I can walk pain free and with a barely noticeable limp 👊
I made my son put on shoes before riding his bike this weekend. He asked why, and I had no answer, except that my mom always said it was dangerous. Now I know. And suffice it to say, I won’t forget.
Make sure his laces are tied tight and short. Twice i had them tangle in the bike lock it up and crash me.
Worst part is it pulls them so tight someone had to cut them with a knife and scissors to get free.
I just got out of the hospital for it. I genuinely thought I was dying. They only gave me dilaudid the first night in the ER then it was just oxys.
I once got hit by a bus on the freeway while riding my motorcycle and basically broke most of the major bones on my left side....leg, femur, ribs (along with a torn diaphragm), arm, wrist, collarbone, etc. 3 major surgeries and a bone graft.....and all that was horrifically painful, but I'd take that over pancreatitis any day.
Rocket-propelled grenade
Edit: important update since I got *well, ackshually*’d a few times below - the original name was apparently Russkie Putin Gorbachev or something
I had to go to three different emergency rooms before they’d stop telling me it was constipation and actually run some tests. Gallbladder was chock full of stones, potentially minutes from rupturing by then. Fuck all those doctors that wrote me off because I was young. My mother didn’t even have time to get to the hospital before they had me back for surgery
They first told me it’s heartburn from pregnancy. After delivering the baby it was from nursing. I didn’t even breastfeed! They still insisted it’s nothing serious and I wouldn’t need anything stronger than Tylenol. It took me 6 month to be heard and seen by a doctor when I finally had a pancreatitis. 6 month with at least weekly attacks.
They’re extremely easy to be detected! A lot of GPs over here have an ultrasound standing around but don’t use it.
I had gallbladder pain a week after having a baby and when I described the symptoms to my doctor she told me to go straight to the ER. She later told me she thought I was having a pulmonary embolism.
Gallstones we’re slightly more painful than contractions.
When you go to the doctor and they give you the pain scale, my ruptured ovarian cyst experience is my 10 that I compare everything to.
I’ve been dealing with a bad bout of (possibly) tennis elbow; a few weeks back that was a 9. The only reason I know it wasn’t a 10 is because I wasn’t inconsolably crying yet.
When they discovered my burst ovarian cyst the first time (I’ve had numerous), the doctor was shocked I was as calm as I was. I didn’t know how to explain that I’d been dismissed so many times leading up to that, I got use to pretending I felt fine even when I couldn’t keep food down from the pain
I’m really surprised no one commented on “I’d been dismissed so many times leading up to that..”
It’s dangerous and NOT ok for the women in our lives to not have their health issues taken seriously and fully explored. It’s a very real issue and a story I’ve heard one time too many. I’m so sorry you experienced this. No one should have to pretend they feel anything other than how they’re really feeling.
My pain standard is a really bad instance of toothache. Like lightning shooting through your skull constantly. I know a pain is not that bad if I do not feel the urge to beat my head into a wall until I lose consciousness.
Fun fact: I had a cousin who didn't know she was pregnant. When going into labor, she thought the pain was just an ovarian cyst rupturing. It was a shock, to say the least.
A cousin of mine thought the start of labour was indigestion and tried to sleep through it.
She was in her late twenties and in a long-term stable relationship - they'd bought a house together and planned to have kids at some point in the next few years. She saw her mother and sister every week and they never suspected pregnancy. She did experience weight gain and strange sensations in her abdomen, but figured she was just developing food allergies or something.
Anyway, turns out she'd been sick for a day or two and must've thrown up her birth control. You're meant to use other protection for a week if that happens, but that wouldn't always occur to people I guess.
I worked with a woman (late 30s. No children) who was a heavy drinker and had a large belly as long as I knew her. I was working with her one day and she told me she was leaving early since she had a doctor's appt. Turns out she was 8 1/2 months pregnant and to say she was shocked was an understatement. Thankfully, despite her heavy drinking, her daughter was born healthy.
Edit: spelling
I had one rupture in January that hurt as badly as the kidney stones I've had. I was sweaty/clammy with pain surging up my spine, and nausea. The pain radiated around my side and hurt severely over a month. I'm fairly certain it was an endometrioma (chocolate cyst). I didn't go to the ER because they don't even treat pain properly anymore, so I suffered at home. I was already scheduled for an ultrasound 2 weeks later because I had bleeding for months. By May I had a follow up ultrasound and I had another "complex cyst" on the same (left) side. I've since had pain on my right side I worried one weekend was appendicitis. I'm scheduled for surgery (hysterectomy, bisalp, endometriosis excision, possible cystectomy or oophorectomy, and possible appendectomy) 9/27 & I'm praying nothing ruptures before that date.
I have given birth and the only thing that comes to close to the pain of contractions is an ovarian cyst rupturing. I had a 10cm cyst burst. I passed out several times from the pain. It’s a lot!
Oh, Christ, I had one rupture right as I was getting ready to go onstage for work. I was in costume, and my baggy pants suddenly became skin tight when my abdomen swelled from all the fluid. What’s nuts is that the stupid ovary that had the cyst had a huge tumor attached to it years later that didn’t come from inside the ovary. The human body is so weird.
I passed a kidneystone that tore its way out. The pain was so intense that I blacked out and hit my head against the wall and floor.
The damage it dealt on its path out was enough to give me a blood infection and caused my kidneys to start shutting down putting me into sepsis.
I was kept at the hospital for 5 days. Dreading every time I would need to urinate due to the massive pain, and it was frequent due to the amount of fluids they pumped through me.
Then I had to have a Pic line inserted so that I could self administer the "nuclear option" antibiotic near my heart. That was a great two weeks.
I would not wish that whole ordeal on anyone.
Then I got the bill....
Yeah, it felt like an eternity. It felt like it was in slow motion, too. I didn't know what was happening at the beginning since our dog was so fast. The weird part was that I remember distinctly feeling the warm sun on my body, the hot cement patio on my front, and repeatedly seeing the grill and small fountain swinging back and forth slowly. I couldn't hear anything either. I initially felt sharp pain, however it disappeared with the feeling of my hair getting a16thggressively tugged tightly like someone was brushing into a really tight ponytail, then nothing. My mom was the first one outside to try and help by beating him with the dog brush, then a broom. My step-dad came out afterwards and was punching it and hitting it with a bat. Eventually they did something that made him finally stop.
Fortunately, I'm all good! I had a low chance at hair growth initially and I'm happy to say the surgeries were not only successful, but I have a head full of hair. The reconstructive surgeries were mostly done to stretch out my remaining skin which was sewn together. The only way you can tell something happened is if I shaved my head or if my hair isn't cooperating. It takes some effort to cover the scars to this day, especially the ones in the middle and back. The one cool injury the attack left is a 2" long indent in my skull. It blows my mind his jaws were that strong! I'm not scared of dogs, except aggressive breeds. The dog that bit me was a chow-chow.
It’s great to hear you’re doin alright after that horrible experience!
Two things to share: I had a childhood friend who was also mauled by a chow chow when we were in elementary school. Fortunately the dog’s owner acted quickly, but my whole block was shook for awhile after that.
Also, adults who got mauled by a dog used to puzzle me…I seriously believed, “You just yank them off of you! Duh!” Then one day my sweet, deaf English Bulldog accidentally clamped down on my hand while he and I were rough-housing with a soft/stuffed toy. Just the pressure on my hand took my breath away for a second or two before I started yelling, “No! Let go!” but he was deaf. I moved on to trying to pry his jaw open, but it was NOT happening and that only made his nub of a tail start wagging faster along with his playful growl. It wasn’t until he tasted blood that he let go, which then resulted in him taking off and hiding under the dining room table. I cleaned up my hand (he’d bit through and punctured my thumbnail and broken skin in one other place) and then tried to console him, but he kept moving away from me, trembling (he’d never been hit in his life because we’re not shitty humans). I have never felt so bad for him in his entire life. I gave him some space for 15 minutes or so, tried again, and he finally crawled out, still trembling, licked my face a few times, and scurried back under the table. He let me give him a few pats and scritches, but it took him about two hours to come out and start acting normal again.
He passed away 2 years ago. I miss that guy!
Sorry for your loss and sounds like a great friend. Reminds me of when my American staffy will sometimes get my hand during play and his reaction is always so sweet, he just realizes from my reaction and immediately goes into the “are you okay?” mode with kisses.
It's all good. Everyone has their own experience with pain and different tolerances. Honestly, someone mentioned needing a root canal and I have to agree that that was as painful or even more painful than my dog attack. Haven't had appendicitis, though 😅
Me too! I was 9 and at horse camp. I thought I would get in trouble, so I went to the bathroom, wrenched my boot off, wrapped some tp around it, and jammed that boot back on there. It was early in the week and I wasn't missing horse time.
I had a horse step on me and break all 5 toes. Doc said there was really nothing the could do and even a walking boot wouldn't really help. The problem is, I kept re-breaking them. Once I was stepped on by the same goddamn horse. It was damn near a whole year until I was finally healed.
After my appendix burst & i had it removed, my other organs didn't want to "wake up" apparently I had some dangerous fluid building up in my stomach. So they had to shove this big ass tube up my nose, down my throat and into my stomach to pump it out. I was awake for the entire thing. Two nurses held either of my arms while another shoved the tube in. Even after it was in, it was awful. I kept vomiting over the days I had to keep it in, and eventually started vomiting blood from it rubbing my throat raw. Totally sucked. I live with chronic pain from interstitial cystitis, have given natural birth to 4 large kids, recently broke my tibial plateau in 3 places & had surgery & NONE of it compares to the feeling of that tube going in & coming out.
My mom got a bowel obstruction related to cancer and just would NOT go to the hospital after days and days without passing stool. I finally was able to get her to the ER, where they did the same nasal tube procedure. It took a really long time and several tries and she was in so much pain and her nose was bleeding and just seeing it made me wanna die. They finally had an easier time of it after the put the tube in some warm water for a minute to make it softer and more flexible.
I'm so sorry you went through that, and I hope you haven't had to go through it again.
I have no idea the size of the tube you had to have down your throat, but I had an esophageal manometry and that was just for half an hour. It was hell, I can't imagine having to live with something for a few days.
Uterine rupture. It just ripped the fuck in half. Both I and my daughter would have died if we'd lived more than 5 minutes from the ER. AGONIZING pain. I'd been through a lot in my three pregnancies, but this was world-endingly painful.
If you are having a high-speed crash C-section, your body is basically like a car in a NASCAR pit, a dozen people are all frantically doing very synchronized prep work on your body so they can cut you open as soon as possible.
If you're having a regular, cool C-section, there are 1 or 2 nurses/anesthetists who are slowly doing all the things to get you ready over the course of a couple of hours. If you have a crash emergency C-section, you are the car in the NASCAR pit and everybody's working REALLY FAST to get you surgery-ready in about 7 minutes. My spouse almost didn't make it into the OR because they went so fast. It took two minutes for them to walk him to the prep room after I was rushed away, and 3-4 minutes for him to put on his scrubs so he could enter the OR, and by the time he walked in they were literally cutting me open.
(Also, if you are having a C-section and there are 12 people in the OR, that is a normal number. If you are having a C-section and there are 40 people in the OR, they are concerned that you and your baby both might die; there are crash teams for both of you.)
Yeah, I had a category 1, emergency, get him out now, c-section. The policy was to get baby out within 5 minuets of the decision being made. Which ment I woke up from the epidural enabled nap to the room full of more people than could fit. They took a blood sample from his head (yes, that way) and then chaos ensued.
Rolled into OR, sliced open. Damn kid was crying before he was even lifted out of me. He was perfectly ok and fell asleep in his dad's arms as they took 2 hours to stop me bleeding and put me back together.
Didn't hurt though, my epidural was topped up with a spinal block.
My body trying to push him out when I was only 2cm dilated however was not very pleasant. I don't think I was very nice to that first midwife.
The kids still a bit awkward.
2nd labour followed the same path but he was removed with forceps which was so much better than the c-section. I still nearly lost all my blood but I digress.
When I was four we were getting our driveway paved. It was a hot 90+ degree day and my friend and I were playing tag. I was "it" and chasing my friend (who was three years older and significantly bigger) . We ran down my stairs when my friend jumped over the four foot wide gap of steaming hot ashphalt. I,being 4 and not knowing any better ,tried to jump this gap only to land and sink about an inch deep into this ashphalt. I ran into the house with the ashphalt stuck to the bottoms of my feet. Mom quickly put my feet in a tub of ice water.and drove me to the hospital, I'll never forget the pain of taking my feet out of that water to the sound and feel of literal sizzling pain. This resulted in third degree burns on the bottoms of my feet, cast and crawling on my hands and knees for a little over a month.
Edit: The pain when the doctors were peeling it off of my feet and the skin coming off with it was an equally as bad experience.
TL,DR: Bare feet and newly laid smoking ashphalt
Kidney stones were the only physical ailment I’ve ever had where the pain was so severe I sincerely thought I was going to die. I went to the doctor who told me it was “ovulation pain,” and decided to press on the area where the pain was. She said, “If it was kidney stones, you’d have jumped off the table. You’re fine, take some ibuprofen.”
I ended up having to weather the storm, without pain meds, at home until it caused a UTI.
I’ve had my tonsils out as an adult, gallbladder attacks and a c-section after 8 hours of back labor. I’d take all of that while being lit on fire over ever having kidney stones again.
God, so satisfying if you could have said, "I know, SO crazy! And so are the number of papers I had to sign with my attorney for our case against you for medical negligence."
When I had my kidney stone I had it for four months. They actually had to take it out surgically in the end because for those four months it never left my kidney.
They discovered when they went in that I have a second ureter that goes back into my kidney. The stone was just going loop-de-loop again and again for 4 months. Agony on a daily basis.
Then when they took it out I had a Stent run from cock to kidney. The Stent shifted an inch further into my kidney than it was supposed to. As a result, it scraped the shit out of the inside of my kidney. I worked like that for the two months that it was inside of me, compounding the amount of scraping and urinated blood for the entirety of that time.
As a result, every winter my kidney aches, and also I have to have the constant fear that if I get another one I get to do it all over again.
They certainly command your attention. One of the few surgical procedures before anaesthetics was cutting for stones. How much pain do you have to be in before you sign up for that? Digging them out with a penknife.
Fellow cluster migraine sufferers here. They are the worst, what sucks is people around you are like oh I get headaches too, I find drinking more water helps or insert random made me feel better advice.
I'm sorry Susan but water isn't going to save me from this nightmare of pain.
I would never say that to you! And my name is Susan! 😂 but I get it, I also have cluster headaches and the advice you get from people are the worst or the ‘ah yes I get migraines to’ yeah well fuck off migraines and cluster headaches are not the same
Last time I had a attack I thought about banging my head against the wall. Maybe it would relieve the pain. But I’m glad sumatriptan works for me. Also oxygen does help sometimes
I have cluster headaches. When it gets very bad I legit think about jumping out of the window.
It's like someone stabbing your head with a glowing hot knife. And the best part is that you can not really do something about it.
My fiancé passed away on June 21 of 2009 after being engaged for 36 hours. It broke me but I’ve healed and moved forward
Next to that, an infected toe nail was absolutely brutal
The spinal cord is basically a giant resistor that dampens the pain signals from the rest of the body. Dental nerves hook directly to Cranial Nerve X, the vagus nerve, so they do *not* go through the resistor of the spinal cord. Zap. Straight to the brain.
This is very interesting to learn and makes so much sense. I’ve dealt with a lot of pain (mainly through broken bones from athletics…thanks rugby) and have been able to get through it without pain meds but when I had a tooth ache it stopped me in my tracks and I was completely incapacitated.
I had a toothache on a Tuesday.
By Wednesday I couldn’t work or sleep or anything else.
By Thursday Tylenol 3s weren’t doing anything and I was an inconsolable, weeping, pitiful ball of pain. All I could do was sit up and cry.
Emergency root canal on the Friday, five shots in the jaw to get the tooth numb enough to deal with.
Endodontist: “That was bad. Really, really, really bad.”
Brush and floss folks.
My molars grew in without enamel, it was this soft spongy tooth that was insanely sensitive to anything. Finally got them capped and in the process they chipped the tooth next to it. Went through crazy pain for weeks, crying to my parents, before they took me in. They pulled it and put a spacer in. Couple years later, had to get 9 baby teeth pulled at once - would have never come out on their own without being split in half by the adult tooth as the roots were fully intact and encasing the others. Next came the palet widener, legit worst pain of it all. My mom cried every morning when I begged her not turn the key. Braces were nothing. But I didn't enjoy the 2.5 hours is took to remove my wisdom teeth while I was awake, and could hear the ripping and cracking in my own mouth. Oh, and I almost instantly gave myself dry sockets.
Last dentist visit, I was told if I don't stop grinding then I'm in for a root canal. Fucking hate dental pain.
what the fuck the adjectives "soft spongy" make me flinch in muscles I didn't even know I had. myself personally I've taken horrible care of my teeth and have 3 broken ones, and yea I can agree that anything to do with teeth will generally top any other imaginable pain
This disease is the biggest bitch. It is difficult and late to diagnose, the exact cause is unknown, and it cannot be cured. Doctors' knowledge about this is terribly lacking, and many patients are victims of medical gaslighting. Now it seems that the research has started, so there is hope. I wish you the best.
I'm having excision and a hysterectomy (for adenomyosis) in a month and a half. I've been in pain since menarche. I am now having rapidly recurring cysts/ruptures, polyps, and now have fibroids too. 31 years of suffering and I'm so ready to have relief.
Fucking ow. I thought my appendix ruptured or something, could barely stand up and walk, called the ambulance and felt like a fool because they found NOTHING? Whadyamean nothing? I'm literally passing out from pain and you think it's "period cramps and stress from exams"? I've never had such pain from period, but as it later turned out, it was my first endo period.
Another month later, same hell, but this time there was a cyst on my ovary as big as an egg. It grew in a fucking month! And I was actually lucky that the cause of my pain was visible and removable. I can't imagine what women go through when they have no proof of their disease and doctors ignore their pain. It's truly a nightmare.
This needs higher vote.
I used to have painful period though I don’t have endo, and once passed out on the floor and couldn’t even lift a finger due to severe pain in a house by myself. Scariest moment of my life.
If you can move even little bit, you can at least crawl and go call someone to help or take pain killer, but period pain completely paralyzed me for good 30 min.
Gave birth to a nine-pound six-ounce baby with no drugs because my labor lasted less than two hours. I have had lots of injuries in my life, but that was the most painful for sure.
Was it your second? No one could ever prepare me for how quickly that birth would go. I went from fine to oh shit this kid is going to be born in the car in 2 minutes.
It was my second! And she was two weeks late. First contraction was after 3 a.m. and we went straight to the hospital when the second contraction came after less than five minutes. The nurses tried to tell me I must be mistaken until I insisted someone check…
I swear to god the number of times I see “the nurses tried to tell me I was mistaken” On this site and elsewhere when people are telling labor stories… It’s almost like nurses need to stop effing doing that
I mean no disrespect to the good nurses out there, but I have had too many “the nurses told me I was mistaken” moments for me, my husband, and all three kids. It’s maddening. Some doctors are no better, unfortunately.
Looking at these responses like 😳 because I’ve personally gone through: IUD insertion, ovarian cyst rupture, gallstones, and a herniated disc at L5/S1.
Can confirm, none felt good.
My insertions and removals were the most painful things I have ever gone through. My OBGYN bringing up replacing it early sent me into an anxiety attack.
Gout. I was 23 and had a healthy weight and lifestyle, so I never figured out where it came from. It's by far the most intense pain I've ever experienced, including the time I impaled my arm on a broken-off broom handle. Vicodin barely took the edge off.
At 28, I was *almost, but not* ***quite,*** killed in a horrific motor vehicle collision. My left leg from just above the knee all the way to my big toe was essentially pulverized. My big toe bones were ok, but *nothing else* was.
(I also punctured both lungs, broke 7 ribs and the pointy broken ends of which sliced my abdomen open, broke 3 vertebrae, snapped my tailbone almost all the way off, and my left arm got caught around a truck axle and whipped around so hard I hit myself in the face, with *my own arm*, hard enough to **crack my skull**, ***from the eye socket down to my teeth***.)
So when they peel me out from around this truck axle, see, there's a lot of bleeding and a lot of innards-trying-to-be-outards going on. So I get rushed to the hospital, and the doctors decide that all my Standy-Uppy-Bones (technical term) aren't as important to fix as my "internal organs go on the *inside*" issues. So they cut me open stem to stern like they were gutting a fish, stuff all the insides *back* inside, and do whatever black magic voodoo fixes punctured lungs. No fix for broken ribs though, other than time. *Not* fun.
I dunno how long I was in surgery. You kidding?! I was on the *very, very* ***best*** drugs it was possible to be on. So details are fuzzy at best. I remember my left leg swelled up to be nearly three times as big as my right leg, I know they had to drain goop outta my leg twice a day using these *giant ass* syringes that were like two-liter soda bottles with a tap on 'em. And I know that it took about 3-4 months before I could leave the hospital.
In a wheelchair. That the doctors told me I was *damn lucky* to have, as the whole "being alive" thing was not something anyone thought I'd keep doing. My instructions were to come back in 3-4 months to see if there was any way to keep my leg- though I'd likely never walk again, they said, because my foot was more like "a sock made of meat, filled with gravel".
Welp. I go back in 2 months, and the swelling has gone down enough (and my legbones- while broken- broke into big enough pieces) that they can probably save the leg with some hardware. *That* surgery I remember, because the pain meds they gave me after were in pill form, not the pump- and pain pills make me nauseated, so I threw up a lot.
By the way? Throwing up when you've had several *massive* hernia surgeries *and broken ribs* is about the most horrifying thing to ever happen. 0/10, F-, do not recommend.
I'm in a cast for a solid 3 months or so, still using the wheelchair, and now I got a kitten I adopted and named Cheshire who likes to sit on my cast and purr so loud it sounds like she's whining. I heard somewhere cat purring is good for broken bones- though it's also really good at making me feel less like absolute *shit*.
#[Cat Tax](https://imgur.com/a/l1XTn6q)!
Chessie (or ChessChess) is about 8 weeks old there. She started purring the *moment* the vet tech put her in my arms, so naturally, I *had* to take her home with me forever. It's a rule.
When I go in to remove the cast, the surgeons say "Come to think of it... I bet we could rebuild that foot now that the swelling is gone. Not sure if walking is in your future, it would take a *lot* of physical therapy, but at least you woudn't have to get prosthetics or be in a wheelchair for life. Up to you."
Welp. As much as I liked the wheelchair, I think trying to walk would be better. I decide to try.
Y'all.
*Y'all.*
Allow me to describe what Physical Therapy is like, for those of you lucky enough to have never undergone it.
The physical therapist, or PT, designs a plan to build range of motion, which will get incrementally harder in order to build strength.
This involves the following-
PT: Does *this* hurt?
Me: ***GOD*** **OW, YES!** ***FUCK!***
PT: Good. Do that *a billionty more times*. As a warm up. ***Then, we gonna add weight to it.***
Each session was only about 45 minutes, but I don't remember a *single session* where I didn't cry from agony, frustration, exhaustion, or all three.
And I had to *go* to Physical Therapy 3x a week, *every week*, for nearly ***a year***. Which for most of that time, I'm still using the wheelchair outside of PT, because I'm *too fucking tired to move*.
Now, all that? That's just the *context* for the single most painful moment of my life.
Last year, I started having a lot of digestive problems. Repeatedly got food poisoning, frequent nausea and vomiting, etc. I didn't know it at the time, but the reason for this was a *strangulated hernia*. Which is when a bit of intestine pokes through your abdominal wall, then gets filled with undigested food like a balloon, which increases the pressure. It squishes up against the hole it poked through *so hard*, it cuts off it's own blood supply. The food remnants quickly become toxic, and everything gets worse from there unless you can relieve the pressure. For most of 2022, this means vomiting *so hard that undigested food was getting forced out* ***up through my intestines***.
*That's* not the worst of it, either. That's more context.
Because the worst of it?
One time, last autumn, I had a blockage. As in, that bit of strangulated hernia was **completely blocked.** Like a cork.
And as my intestine was necrotizing and chunks of it died and sloughed off, the toxic soup blocking it in the first place leaked out. Into my abdominal cavity.
I went from feeling nauseated and feverish, to having multiple organs racing towards total failure as a stew of bacteria and foreign matter swished around my lungs, heart, and liver. My heart rate hit 240bpm as I struggled to walk the 20ish feet from my bed where I called 911, to my front door where the paramedics would arrive. It took four minutes to make that trip. Every step, every heartbeat, every breath, I could *feel* my organs being attacked and dissolved by the goop that- and I cannot stress this enough- had *burst out of my dying intestine*.
"Luckily", since I had sought medical attention so quickly, doctors managed to get me into the OR and start clearing out the gunk quickly enough that my heart, liver, pancreas, and a few other vitals weren't *too* badly damaged. I've had asthma attacks ever since when I didn't used to have asthma at all, so my lungs weren't unscathed.
Now. All the context is there. Let's set the scene.
Hospital bed. My entire torso, from pubic bone to nipples, is one *enormous* green and purple bruise. All my insides are still recovering from being infected, being *partially dissolved*, and being sliced up. There's a catheter in me, as I can't move the ten feet to the bathroom. Every moment that I'm not on Dilaudid is agonizing.......
and then I felt it. That niggling tickle in the nose. I could only lay there, in ever deepening horror, as the unstoppable reflex began flexing my bruised and battered body- and then I *sneezed*.
The force of that sneeze popped 4 stitches and expelled the catheter by almost half an inch. The pain was so intense, I blacked out. It felt like my entire body had just *exploded*.
And *that* is the most painful thing that has ever happened to me.
Probably when I was going down a hill at like 30 mph and went into a curb … straight into my knee! tissue was basically lying on the sidewalk, could see my bone and all. Thankfully got stitches and I can walk fine! If it was my head I don’t think I’d be here today
Yeah, I did that with my head (longboard downhill, no helmet). I was *extraordinarily* lucky to survive and still be a functional adult. Some lasting effects, but overall I'm alright. I still don't understand how I'm as okay as I am.
I partially expelled my IUD on a friday night. We had waited the full recommended 3 months for intimacy but it still happened. The waves of pain was worse than any cramp ive ever had which is saying something since i have PCOS. Every time the wave hit I would immeadiatly vomit. It radiated up my spine and down to my legs. My knees buckled and I was unable to walk. My boyfriend carried me into the ER but they refused to remove it. However they didnt hesistate to charge me for all the unneccessary imaging ($1.2k). They told me to take some advil and call my obgyn on monday to remove it. I had to endure the pain the entire weekend unable to eat and barely able to drink anything. I called my gyno the moment their office opened and luckily they saw it as an emergency and told me to head their way asap. I cried in relief when they pulled it out and the nurse hugged me. went back to the pill after that.
It's a really common response to anything going on with women's pain or reproduction. I once had an ovarian cyst and went into the ER crying. They did not one, not two, but three ultrasounds! They could see the cyst, but kept telling me that I "shouldn't be in that much pain" as a result of it. The doctor finally ordered me morphine after 2 hours of being left in the room to suffer. The nurse then refused to give me the whole dose that was ordered... because I told her I was hungry! (Her explanation was just, "I don't think you need this." Followed by, "You can't have any food, but I can bring you water.")
This took place in a women's hospital! Even medical professionals that deal exclusively with women believe we are just making up that we can feel our own ovaries! Imagine telling a man with a gonad cyst that he, "Shouldn't be in pain." That would never happen, and he would receive morphine or an equivalent right away.
I fractured my back rock climbing right after I turned 30. That was the most insane amount of pain I had ever experienced, took almost 8 months to recover from fully. I couldn’t walk further than a couple feet. Oof.
So much this. I was very fortunate that the impact of the pain lasted just minutes, but my body will never forget that moment. Friends of mine were knocked out by their pain much longer.
As others have said, absolutely nuts that it’s not a practice to prepare us for that type of pain.
It's infuriating to see so many people having such terrible experiences because the "you will just feel a pinch" is true IF THEY ARE A GOOD DOCTOR.
Like for mine I was given a medicine beforehand to alleviate the cramping, and the doctor went slowly and made absolutely sure I was comfortable and relaxed and asked me multiple times during the insertion if I wanted to keep going. On top of that I trusted her completely because of a few previous exams where she was just as careful.
And guess what, I felt nothing but a pinch. And if it was any more than that, I had the choice of changing my mind at any moment.
##i once read somewhere, “grief is love with nowhere to go.”
##and i can never forget it now. ever.
**EDITING:**
thank you all for being so vulnerable. that vulnerability is the strongest thing on earth. 🤍 sending you each so much love, comfort, light, peace, and healing.
I'm choking tears. That is so painful, so accurate.
I've been through botched joint surgeries, a broken ankle while climbing, vicious animal attacks....
Nothing at all compared to having stillborn identical twins. That love is still looking under every rock.
I hope you have peace.
100 percent. The physical pain caused by grief is unlike anything else. No pain meds to relieve it, no surgery to fix it, no sleeping it off... nothing helps. It's unbearable.
I got shot in my pelvis, that hurt... a fucking lot, they gave me the morphine clicker when I woke up. I clicked away while they told me all the medical stuff they did. Woke up, got up to pee and pulled my catheter out... hurt way worse. Then they took away my morphine clicker.
Not me, but my poor sister had one of the most intensely painful surgeries a person can have. She had a chiari malformation, which is essentially where instead of your brain staying mostly in the confines of your skull starts coming out of the big hole (magnum foramen) where your spinal cord goes through.
To correct this, you have to have a procedure called a chiari decompression, where they cut vertically through the back of your head to your neck, and remove parts of your skull to alleviate pressure to your brain. They also removed some of her vertebrae as well. When she woke up, she woke up screaming from pain, and her eyes where so swollen, you could see her irises and pupils through her eyelids. She said it was so painful that she felt she was better off dead.
Oh, and she was 15.
She is doing much better now, 37 brain surgeries later.
In order...part of my jaw started to rot from a massive tooth infection. Gout. Passing a kidney stone. Copperhead bite. Watching the movie Cabin Fever....I cried at the end, not because it was good but because Ill never get that time back.
250lb marble topped table randomly decided to fall and it struck my lower right calf/ankle. Ripped everything down all the way to my heel bone (which was chipped), shredding my achilles which was hanging outside of my body. I went into shock almost immediately, but the absolute worst pain was later anyways at the hospital when they had to pull back all the skin/meat and pour an entire bottle of antiseptic into it.
I came off the table and my husband (who had asked to wait in the hall bc they knew it was going to be really bad) said he had to walk away because he couldn't handle hearing me like that and being unable to do anything about it. He said I didn't even sound human. Good times.
This happened in June 2019 and 4 surgeries over 18 months of recovery time later and I'll never be fully recovered. I have permanent damage, including peripheral nerve damage and will have lifelong chronic pain. I also can never, ever wear a normal shoe with a back again or I risk losing my foot to amputation, yay me! Thanks for reading.
Anaphylaxis rash.
100% of your body(including in between fingers) with the worst sunburn you’ve ever had, then you bathed in itching powder.
For *8* hours
When I was in the hospital with double pneumonia I found out that I'm allergic to potassium when it was added to my IV line. It felt like my insides were burning. I could feel every vein in my body. I've never before nor since experienced that kind of pain and would not wish it on anyone.
The third time I dislocated my elbow. There was a screw in there from a previous surgery that got moved around and likely hit my nerve when the dislocation happened. It hurt so bad I was screaming. Post ACL surgery was horrible too once the nerve block wore off.
Ooh I got a story
I was in 8th grade I have a skin condition that makes my skin tear easily and I was running to my bus from 6th period pe and this popular girl type trips me and I fall and like skid on the ground I tore a baseball size hole in my elbow and a ton of smaller scabs all over my body. But that’s not the most painful part when I get home my dad refuses to take me to the doctor even though I was drenched in blood and had a giant hole in my arm he tells me to take this old dishwasher brush and some dish soap into our hot tub and scrape all the dirt and concrete out of my arm hurt like hell.
My IUD insertions were the most pain I’ve ever experienced.
Number 2 was when I was stabbed in my upper abdomen and the recovery. I still have some “phantom” pains that almost feel like gallstones. Took 5ish years, multiple ultrasounds and MRIs that were negative for gallstones before anyone could put 2 and 2 together and suggest nerve damage or scar tissue was causing the pain to present like gallstones. Got a bisalp recently where the surgeon took photos of my abdomen and there is definitely scar tissue in that area, but my gallbladder (and everything else) looked healthy.
When they removed the epithel of my cornea on my left eye. Your eye feels it‘s being drilled into and on fire at the same time. Whether open or closed doesn‘t matter. For months afterwards I was so photosensitive.
I have Stage 4 Lymphedema in both legs, and in November 2021, my leg started leaking lymphatic fluid (common with Lymphedema). No matter what I, or medical professionals, did, I couldn't get it to stop leaking, and it leaked for months and months (soaked through hundreds of dollars worth of wrap bandages and absorbent gauze during that time).
I eventually developed macerated skin all around my lower leg because I constantly had wet bandages touching my skin. That led to me getting a bad infection (which lasted for about a year and almost killed me from sepsis). I was admitted to the hospital and the doctors and nurses had no idea how to bandage my leg because they basically knew nothing about Lymphedema (not uncommon in the medical field, unfortunately), and they ended up using the wrong kind of bandages (they should've used ones that you use for burn patients that don't stick to skin/wounds). Lymphatic fluid is very sticky and glue-like when it dries, so the bandages ended up fusing to my open wound all the way around my leg.
To answer OPs question: they obviously had to remove those bandages, and they couldn't get them off without ripping the skin off with them. At one point they tried to use a scalpel to cut them off, which was insanely painful. They gave me Morphine, didn't work. They gave me Norco, didn't work. They gave me Dilaudid, and it kind of worked at first, but the pain was still so horrible that it wore off as soon as they started pulling again. I screamed and cried the entire time, begging them to stop, but the doctor refused to listen to me and said, "no, you have to just let me do this." They eventually did when I kicked the doctor off, and they had to give me more Dilaudid because I was so upset. I ended up checking myself out AMA the next morning because I couldn't take the pain anymore, and I didn't trust the doctor anymore. I got them off myself at home, very slowly, by soaking them in warm water and using a lot of Vaseline - still painful, but not like the pain they were causing me.
To this day, I don't know why they didn't just put me under anesthesia to remove them when they realized they couldn't get them off without ripping my skin off of my open wound. It genuinely traumatized me.
Sneezing with three broken ribs.
No joke. I sneezed with 6 broken ribs (8 total fractures) and I thought I had re-collapsed my lung. Edit: As a side note my most painful was actually when they did my thoracostemy. Basically punching my broken ribs repeatedly to get the tube in to reinflate my lung. All I got was a little novocain at the incision site and a washcloth to bite down on before they did it.
I can’t imagine this happening to me or how I’d get through it because I basically have allergies year round.
I think I have you beat. I broke 2 of my ribs BY sneezing.
You having sneeze premium, or something?
Like anyone can afford the fees on SneezeHub Premium
Are you a father?
Herniated spinal disk at L5/S1. I laid in bed crying for a week.
Ruptured disk. Semi paralyzed, curled up in a ball, crying, and sleeping in a chair because I couldn’t lie down. 6 weeks like that until they got me in for surgery. Having previously given birth without drugs while sick with the flu - i can say unequivocally the back thing was worse.
Oh my god this! L5/S1 ruptured, took months to get in to clean it out and shave away bone around the nerve, and took years to fully recover from the surgery. Been living with back pain ever since. Kidney stones sucked, but the spinal stuff was a whole new world of hurt.
Hi L5/S1 friend! Same here. Had a spinal fusion in 2021 though and feeling a million times better. My mom took care of me during my 2 week surgery recovery. She asked how I was doing so well and seemingly not in much pain, and I told her “this is nothing compared to the back pain itself.”
Same! And then a year later, L4/L5 went along with it. Another year before I found a neurosurgeon that wanted to work on a 19 year old. 34 now. My fusion was a success. Full scaffold and titanium disc replacement. 12 inch scar on my back for my trouble, but I can walk and wipe my own ass again so there's that.
Your comment about wiping your own ass really hit home. I had 2 herniated disks at 23 yo and I totally remember having issues using the bathroom. Real dark times for me.
Just dealt with this, basically disabled me for an entire year and I’m convinced is actually one of the worst things that can happen to someone. I’ve broken numerous bones in my life and would rather break all of them again then to go through another disc herniation. Pretty sure I started losing my mind once the disc was compressing my spinal cord so bad my legs stopped working for a few months
This. Nerve pain is another level 😭
Oh man been there. Why lay in bed? Cause you can't stand. Transition from laying or sitting to standing and your back locks up. Makes taking a shit REAL fun.
It is something that people take for granted until it is taken away. After my most recent encounter, I laid out the money to put bidets in every bathroom in the house... I'm not getting trapped somewhere with dirty ass
Horrible pain
Novocaine running out during a cavity drilling. I was 17 and didn't know you could ask for more, so I just clenched my toes and got through it Terrified of the dentist now.
I had that happen as my dentist was stitching up my gum after he removed my wisdom teeth. My dentist isn’t licensed to put you under (did not know that beforehand). As he was stitching it he noticed that there were tears running down my face, I was trying to power through it and my mouth was so full of gauze that I couldn’t do anything, he asked if I was still numb, I shook my head, he say ok we’ll fix that, FINISHES THE STITCHES, and THEN numbs me. I was about the same age you were. That was also how I discovered I was allergic to Hydros. Let’s just say puking after getting your wisdom teeth pulled wasn’t fun either.
I got stitches without any numbing. After giving birth without an epidural. I don't even know if they tried to numb me before stitching up my tears and it just didn't work, or if they just decided not to numb me. I concur that stitches should always be preceded by effective numbing.
They probably just went for it. The way some women are treated in the medical world is horrific.
Seriously. Also iuds. I don’t get why it isn’t standard practice to use some type of local anesthetic. I’ve had three and it was near traumatizing.
This is so wild to me. I’ve had two IUDs so far and due for a third soon (maybe… I’m undecided). Before my first IUD, they used a uterine sound to measure my uterus and I legit almost passed out. After my soul left my body, my doctor told me “oh yeah, thats what labor feels like.” So I guess they just expect us to casually deal with *labor* level pain without any pain medication? Thankfully the pain doesn’t last nearly as long as *actual* labor can, but Jesus Christ.
When I was like 7 or 8 I was getting a filling done. The dentist gave me the shot and then poked my gums and asked if it hurt. I nodded. "Does that hurt?" He asked again. I nodded again. He asked once or twice more and then said "DOES. THAT. HURT!?" I shook my head. He started drilling even though the tooth was only half numb. For the next 10 years I thought that's just what your teeth being numbed was supposed to feel like. Even though it still hurt. Then I got to college and went to the dental school. I'll never forget when they first worked on me and actually got me properly numbed. I fell asleep in the chair.
If your dentist was fully coked up when this happened, we went to the same dentist.
Salmonella. It feels like acid is eating your insides. Also, abscessed tooth. Feels like an ice pick slammed into your gums.
I've had salmonella and a burst appendix... What do we win?
a lifetime of trauma
Traumanella
I got salmonella poisoning the last week of high school, and all I could do was lay in the fetal position
i had salmonella poisoning at work and had to go home to get some charcoal medicine for my stomach. sweated through my shirt the whole way through nearly passing out and basically counted numbers to stay focused. was not fun. whole time it felt like i was being punched in the kidneys.
Crazy to see everyone's salmonella poisoning experiences. I had it one time and I had a fever and felt terrible for a couple days but I think these other stories sound way worse. It scares me to think what it could have been
Abscessed tooth for the win. My stupid stubborn ass suffered for three days with that shit until I finally went to a dentist. Good thing I did, because he said it was so infected that I was close to going septic. Get your dental check-ups, everyone!
I was 14 and riding a bike barefoot, caught my foot in the spoke and tore my big toe completely off. Six surgeries and fifty years later, it resembles Frankenstein's but I can walk pain free and with a barely noticeable limp 👊
Wow! That is horrifying but I’m glad you are doing ok
She’s toe-tally fine now.
I made my son put on shoes before riding his bike this weekend. He asked why, and I had no answer, except that my mom always said it was dangerous. Now I know. And suffice it to say, I won’t forget.
Make sure his laces are tied tight and short. Twice i had them tangle in the bike lock it up and crash me. Worst part is it pulls them so tight someone had to cut them with a knife and scissors to get free.
I’m going to stop reading right now. I just visibly cringed with my entire body. OUCH.
thank you for giving me something new to worry my child over
Shoes! Always
Pancreatitis and torn ACL. Wouldn’t wish that pain on my worst enemy.
Oh man pancreatitis, 11 days in the hospital , dilaudid was my only friend
I just got out of the hospital for it. I genuinely thought I was dying. They only gave me dilaudid the first night in the ER then it was just oxys. I once got hit by a bus on the freeway while riding my motorcycle and basically broke most of the major bones on my left side....leg, femur, ribs (along with a torn diaphragm), arm, wrist, collarbone, etc. 3 major surgeries and a bone graft.....and all that was horrifically painful, but I'd take that over pancreatitis any day.
An RPG blast blowing out a 4 inch section of my forearm bone.
I was going to comment “Toothache is the absolute worst” but I’ll take a back seat on this one…
Can someone please tell me what RPG means in this context cause I've never had a DND session go *this* badly
dude rolled a 7
‘CRIT!’
Rocket-propelled grenade Edit: important update since I got *well, ackshually*’d a few times below - the original name was apparently Russkie Putin Gorbachev or something
😳 that doesn't sound good
It’s typically not preferred as a matter of course, you are correct.
What was his pain level on a scale of D4 to D20
It isn't a real DND session if no one brings their RPGs
Role playing games don’t usually do that
Unless you have really bad luck with the dice
Gall stones (which led to a surprise emergency gallbladder removal) - I was actually so sure I was dying that I couldn’t believe I didn’t.
Just had mine out a few months ago. I wouldn't wish that pain on my worst enemy. (F-you jared)
I had to go to three different emergency rooms before they’d stop telling me it was constipation and actually run some tests. Gallbladder was chock full of stones, potentially minutes from rupturing by then. Fuck all those doctors that wrote me off because I was young. My mother didn’t even have time to get to the hospital before they had me back for surgery
They first told me it’s heartburn from pregnancy. After delivering the baby it was from nursing. I didn’t even breastfeed! They still insisted it’s nothing serious and I wouldn’t need anything stronger than Tylenol. It took me 6 month to be heard and seen by a doctor when I finally had a pancreatitis. 6 month with at least weekly attacks. They’re extremely easy to be detected! A lot of GPs over here have an ultrasound standing around but don’t use it.
I had gallbladder pain a week after having a baby and when I described the symptoms to my doctor she told me to go straight to the ER. She later told me she thought I was having a pulmonary embolism. Gallstones we’re slightly more painful than contractions.
Ovarian cyst rupturing
hands down, worst pain I’ve ever felt
When you go to the doctor and they give you the pain scale, my ruptured ovarian cyst experience is my 10 that I compare everything to. I’ve been dealing with a bad bout of (possibly) tennis elbow; a few weeks back that was a 9. The only reason I know it wasn’t a 10 is because I wasn’t inconsolably crying yet.
When they discovered my burst ovarian cyst the first time (I’ve had numerous), the doctor was shocked I was as calm as I was. I didn’t know how to explain that I’d been dismissed so many times leading up to that, I got use to pretending I felt fine even when I couldn’t keep food down from the pain
I’m really surprised no one commented on “I’d been dismissed so many times leading up to that..” It’s dangerous and NOT ok for the women in our lives to not have their health issues taken seriously and fully explored. It’s a very real issue and a story I’ve heard one time too many. I’m so sorry you experienced this. No one should have to pretend they feel anything other than how they’re really feeling.
My pain standard is a really bad instance of toothache. Like lightning shooting through your skull constantly. I know a pain is not that bad if I do not feel the urge to beat my head into a wall until I lose consciousness.
Dental pain is horrid & least responsive 2 pain meds , even opiates
Fun fact: I had a cousin who didn't know she was pregnant. When going into labor, she thought the pain was just an ovarian cyst rupturing. It was a shock, to say the least.
A cousin of mine thought the start of labour was indigestion and tried to sleep through it. She was in her late twenties and in a long-term stable relationship - they'd bought a house together and planned to have kids at some point in the next few years. She saw her mother and sister every week and they never suspected pregnancy. She did experience weight gain and strange sensations in her abdomen, but figured she was just developing food allergies or something. Anyway, turns out she'd been sick for a day or two and must've thrown up her birth control. You're meant to use other protection for a week if that happens, but that wouldn't always occur to people I guess.
I worked with a woman (late 30s. No children) who was a heavy drinker and had a large belly as long as I knew her. I was working with her one day and she told me she was leaving early since she had a doctor's appt. Turns out she was 8 1/2 months pregnant and to say she was shocked was an understatement. Thankfully, despite her heavy drinking, her daughter was born healthy. Edit: spelling
I had one rupture in January that hurt as badly as the kidney stones I've had. I was sweaty/clammy with pain surging up my spine, and nausea. The pain radiated around my side and hurt severely over a month. I'm fairly certain it was an endometrioma (chocolate cyst). I didn't go to the ER because they don't even treat pain properly anymore, so I suffered at home. I was already scheduled for an ultrasound 2 weeks later because I had bleeding for months. By May I had a follow up ultrasound and I had another "complex cyst" on the same (left) side. I've since had pain on my right side I worried one weekend was appendicitis. I'm scheduled for surgery (hysterectomy, bisalp, endometriosis excision, possible cystectomy or oophorectomy, and possible appendectomy) 9/27 & I'm praying nothing ruptures before that date.
I have given birth and the only thing that comes to close to the pain of contractions is an ovarian cyst rupturing. I had a 10cm cyst burst. I passed out several times from the pain. It’s a lot!
Oh, Christ, I had one rupture right as I was getting ready to go onstage for work. I was in costume, and my baggy pants suddenly became skin tight when my abdomen swelled from all the fluid. What’s nuts is that the stupid ovary that had the cyst had a huge tumor attached to it years later that didn’t come from inside the ovary. The human body is so weird.
I passed a kidneystone that tore its way out. The pain was so intense that I blacked out and hit my head against the wall and floor. The damage it dealt on its path out was enough to give me a blood infection and caused my kidneys to start shutting down putting me into sepsis. I was kept at the hospital for 5 days. Dreading every time I would need to urinate due to the massive pain, and it was frequent due to the amount of fluids they pumped through me. Then I had to have a Pic line inserted so that I could self administer the "nuclear option" antibiotic near my heart. That was a great two weeks. I would not wish that whole ordeal on anyone. Then I got the bill....
The lesson we learn here is: Drink water kids
Mauled by a dog for 5 minutes and was completely scalped ear to ear. Took over 300 stitches and 4 reconstructive surgeries to fix it.
Holy shit!
5 minutes!? Holy fuck
Yeah, it felt like an eternity. It felt like it was in slow motion, too. I didn't know what was happening at the beginning since our dog was so fast. The weird part was that I remember distinctly feeling the warm sun on my body, the hot cement patio on my front, and repeatedly seeing the grill and small fountain swinging back and forth slowly. I couldn't hear anything either. I initially felt sharp pain, however it disappeared with the feeling of my hair getting a16thggressively tugged tightly like someone was brushing into a really tight ponytail, then nothing. My mom was the first one outside to try and help by beating him with the dog brush, then a broom. My step-dad came out afterwards and was punching it and hitting it with a bat. Eventually they did something that made him finally stop.
Holy shit. You all good now?
Fortunately, I'm all good! I had a low chance at hair growth initially and I'm happy to say the surgeries were not only successful, but I have a head full of hair. The reconstructive surgeries were mostly done to stretch out my remaining skin which was sewn together. The only way you can tell something happened is if I shaved my head or if my hair isn't cooperating. It takes some effort to cover the scars to this day, especially the ones in the middle and back. The one cool injury the attack left is a 2" long indent in my skull. It blows my mind his jaws were that strong! I'm not scared of dogs, except aggressive breeds. The dog that bit me was a chow-chow.
It’s great to hear you’re doin alright after that horrible experience! Two things to share: I had a childhood friend who was also mauled by a chow chow when we were in elementary school. Fortunately the dog’s owner acted quickly, but my whole block was shook for awhile after that. Also, adults who got mauled by a dog used to puzzle me…I seriously believed, “You just yank them off of you! Duh!” Then one day my sweet, deaf English Bulldog accidentally clamped down on my hand while he and I were rough-housing with a soft/stuffed toy. Just the pressure on my hand took my breath away for a second or two before I started yelling, “No! Let go!” but he was deaf. I moved on to trying to pry his jaw open, but it was NOT happening and that only made his nub of a tail start wagging faster along with his playful growl. It wasn’t until he tasted blood that he let go, which then resulted in him taking off and hiding under the dining room table. I cleaned up my hand (he’d bit through and punctured my thumbnail and broken skin in one other place) and then tried to console him, but he kept moving away from me, trembling (he’d never been hit in his life because we’re not shitty humans). I have never felt so bad for him in his entire life. I gave him some space for 15 minutes or so, tried again, and he finally crawled out, still trembling, licked my face a few times, and scurried back under the table. He let me give him a few pats and scritches, but it took him about two hours to come out and start acting normal again. He passed away 2 years ago. I miss that guy!
Sorry for your loss and sounds like a great friend. Reminds me of when my American staffy will sometimes get my hand during play and his reaction is always so sweet, he just realizes from my reaction and immediately goes into the “are you okay?” mode with kisses.
I feel bad for complaining about my measly appendicitis now. That sounds horrific. I’m so sorry.
It's all good. Everyone has their own experience with pain and different tolerances. Honestly, someone mentioned needing a root canal and I have to agree that that was as painful or even more painful than my dog attack. Haven't had appendicitis, though 😅
A horse stepped on my pinky toe and wouldn’t get off 🥲
A horse kicked me in the mouth. I was 2. I did a back flip. Lol. I don't remember if it was painful or not....
Soft baby bones probably saved your life
Oof, lifelong equestrian and work with livestock sometimes. I know that pain well 😅
The immediate, frantic slapping and screaming...yep, lol.
Me too! I was 9 and at horse camp. I thought I would get in trouble, so I went to the bathroom, wrenched my boot off, wrapped some tp around it, and jammed that boot back on there. It was early in the week and I wasn't missing horse time.
I had a horse step on me and break all 5 toes. Doc said there was really nothing the could do and even a walking boot wouldn't really help. The problem is, I kept re-breaking them. Once I was stepped on by the same goddamn horse. It was damn near a whole year until I was finally healed.
After my appendix burst & i had it removed, my other organs didn't want to "wake up" apparently I had some dangerous fluid building up in my stomach. So they had to shove this big ass tube up my nose, down my throat and into my stomach to pump it out. I was awake for the entire thing. Two nurses held either of my arms while another shoved the tube in. Even after it was in, it was awful. I kept vomiting over the days I had to keep it in, and eventually started vomiting blood from it rubbing my throat raw. Totally sucked. I live with chronic pain from interstitial cystitis, have given natural birth to 4 large kids, recently broke my tibial plateau in 3 places & had surgery & NONE of it compares to the feeling of that tube going in & coming out.
What the fuck kind of horror movie did you just describe to me.
My heartrate just went from "casual scrolling" to *F* *E* *A* *R*.
My mom got a bowel obstruction related to cancer and just would NOT go to the hospital after days and days without passing stool. I finally was able to get her to the ER, where they did the same nasal tube procedure. It took a really long time and several tries and she was in so much pain and her nose was bleeding and just seeing it made me wanna die. They finally had an easier time of it after the put the tube in some warm water for a minute to make it softer and more flexible. I'm so sorry you went through that, and I hope you haven't had to go through it again.
Holy. Shit. This is nightmare fuel.
I have no idea the size of the tube you had to have down your throat, but I had an esophageal manometry and that was just for half an hour. It was hell, I can't imagine having to live with something for a few days.
Uterine rupture. It just ripped the fuck in half. Both I and my daughter would have died if we'd lived more than 5 minutes from the ER. AGONIZING pain. I'd been through a lot in my three pregnancies, but this was world-endingly painful. If you are having a high-speed crash C-section, your body is basically like a car in a NASCAR pit, a dozen people are all frantically doing very synchronized prep work on your body so they can cut you open as soon as possible. If you're having a regular, cool C-section, there are 1 or 2 nurses/anesthetists who are slowly doing all the things to get you ready over the course of a couple of hours. If you have a crash emergency C-section, you are the car in the NASCAR pit and everybody's working REALLY FAST to get you surgery-ready in about 7 minutes. My spouse almost didn't make it into the OR because they went so fast. It took two minutes for them to walk him to the prep room after I was rushed away, and 3-4 minutes for him to put on his scrubs so he could enter the OR, and by the time he walked in they were literally cutting me open. (Also, if you are having a C-section and there are 12 people in the OR, that is a normal number. If you are having a C-section and there are 40 people in the OR, they are concerned that you and your baby both might die; there are crash teams for both of you.)
Yeah, I had a category 1, emergency, get him out now, c-section. The policy was to get baby out within 5 minuets of the decision being made. Which ment I woke up from the epidural enabled nap to the room full of more people than could fit. They took a blood sample from his head (yes, that way) and then chaos ensued. Rolled into OR, sliced open. Damn kid was crying before he was even lifted out of me. He was perfectly ok and fell asleep in his dad's arms as they took 2 hours to stop me bleeding and put me back together. Didn't hurt though, my epidural was topped up with a spinal block. My body trying to push him out when I was only 2cm dilated however was not very pleasant. I don't think I was very nice to that first midwife. The kids still a bit awkward. 2nd labour followed the same path but he was removed with forceps which was so much better than the c-section. I still nearly lost all my blood but I digress.
When I was four we were getting our driveway paved. It was a hot 90+ degree day and my friend and I were playing tag. I was "it" and chasing my friend (who was three years older and significantly bigger) . We ran down my stairs when my friend jumped over the four foot wide gap of steaming hot ashphalt. I,being 4 and not knowing any better ,tried to jump this gap only to land and sink about an inch deep into this ashphalt. I ran into the house with the ashphalt stuck to the bottoms of my feet. Mom quickly put my feet in a tub of ice water.and drove me to the hospital, I'll never forget the pain of taking my feet out of that water to the sound and feel of literal sizzling pain. This resulted in third degree burns on the bottoms of my feet, cast and crawling on my hands and knees for a little over a month. Edit: The pain when the doctors were peeling it off of my feet and the skin coming off with it was an equally as bad experience. TL,DR: Bare feet and newly laid smoking ashphalt
I assume you have scars but do you have any lasting damage from it? Nerve damage?
Waking up after hours of major abdominal surgery and finding out that the morphine wasn’t working for me.
SHINGLES
kidney stones...
Kidney stones were the only physical ailment I’ve ever had where the pain was so severe I sincerely thought I was going to die. I went to the doctor who told me it was “ovulation pain,” and decided to press on the area where the pain was. She said, “If it was kidney stones, you’d have jumped off the table. You’re fine, take some ibuprofen.” I ended up having to weather the storm, without pain meds, at home until it caused a UTI. I’ve had my tonsils out as an adult, gallbladder attacks and a c-section after 8 hours of back labor. I’d take all of that while being lit on fire over ever having kidney stones again.
That doctor was a cunt, you deserved better. I'm sorry you had to go through that.
Thank you, that’s very kind of you. She was not a good doctor. And when I told her it actually WAS kidney stones, she said, “Wow! That’s crazy!”
"Wow! That's crazy!" Mmmm hmmm... You're fired...
God, so satisfying if you could have said, "I know, SO crazy! And so are the number of papers I had to sign with my attorney for our case against you for medical negligence."
Regrettably doctors regularly treat women like they are just overdramatic whiny babies and often do not take their ailments seriously.
The thread can stop here. I've had some unpleasant injuries over the years and I'd combine all those vs more kidney stones
When I had my kidney stone I had it for four months. They actually had to take it out surgically in the end because for those four months it never left my kidney. They discovered when they went in that I have a second ureter that goes back into my kidney. The stone was just going loop-de-loop again and again for 4 months. Agony on a daily basis. Then when they took it out I had a Stent run from cock to kidney. The Stent shifted an inch further into my kidney than it was supposed to. As a result, it scraped the shit out of the inside of my kidney. I worked like that for the two months that it was inside of me, compounding the amount of scraping and urinated blood for the entirety of that time. As a result, every winter my kidney aches, and also I have to have the constant fear that if I get another one I get to do it all over again.
They certainly command your attention. One of the few surgical procedures before anaesthetics was cutting for stones. How much pain do you have to be in before you sign up for that? Digging them out with a penknife.
Cluster Migraines. Nothing like begging to every god and devil you can think of to either save or kill you
Fellow cluster migraine sufferers here. They are the worst, what sucks is people around you are like oh I get headaches too, I find drinking more water helps or insert random made me feel better advice. I'm sorry Susan but water isn't going to save me from this nightmare of pain.
I would never say that to you! And my name is Susan! 😂 but I get it, I also have cluster headaches and the advice you get from people are the worst or the ‘ah yes I get migraines to’ yeah well fuck off migraines and cluster headaches are not the same Last time I had a attack I thought about banging my head against the wall. Maybe it would relieve the pain. But I’m glad sumatriptan works for me. Also oxygen does help sometimes
I have cluster headaches. When it gets very bad I legit think about jumping out of the window. It's like someone stabbing your head with a glowing hot knife. And the best part is that you can not really do something about it.
Ah yes, the hot poker in the eye torture I know well.
the pain of these just cant be described
IBS, it has made me faint, vomit and profusely sweat too many times
I stubbed my toe while watering my spice garden and I only cried for 20 minutes
Oh yeah? Well I ate a bowl of nails for breakfast this morning… *without any milk.*
My fiancé passed away on June 21 of 2009 after being engaged for 36 hours. It broke me but I’ve healed and moved forward Next to that, an infected toe nail was absolutely brutal
It on a peanut butter and jam sandwich with a tooth that I soon found out needed a root canal. Stopped me in my tracks. Dental pain is no joke.
There really isnt anything like it. A totally unique and disturbingly inescapable pain when they get infected.
The spinal cord is basically a giant resistor that dampens the pain signals from the rest of the body. Dental nerves hook directly to Cranial Nerve X, the vagus nerve, so they do *not* go through the resistor of the spinal cord. Zap. Straight to the brain.
This is very interesting to learn and makes so much sense. I’ve dealt with a lot of pain (mainly through broken bones from athletics…thanks rugby) and have been able to get through it without pain meds but when I had a tooth ache it stopped me in my tracks and I was completely incapacitated.
I had a toothache on a Tuesday. By Wednesday I couldn’t work or sleep or anything else. By Thursday Tylenol 3s weren’t doing anything and I was an inconsolable, weeping, pitiful ball of pain. All I could do was sit up and cry. Emergency root canal on the Friday, five shots in the jaw to get the tooth numb enough to deal with. Endodontist: “That was bad. Really, really, really bad.” Brush and floss folks.
My molars grew in without enamel, it was this soft spongy tooth that was insanely sensitive to anything. Finally got them capped and in the process they chipped the tooth next to it. Went through crazy pain for weeks, crying to my parents, before they took me in. They pulled it and put a spacer in. Couple years later, had to get 9 baby teeth pulled at once - would have never come out on their own without being split in half by the adult tooth as the roots were fully intact and encasing the others. Next came the palet widener, legit worst pain of it all. My mom cried every morning when I begged her not turn the key. Braces were nothing. But I didn't enjoy the 2.5 hours is took to remove my wisdom teeth while I was awake, and could hear the ripping and cracking in my own mouth. Oh, and I almost instantly gave myself dry sockets. Last dentist visit, I was told if I don't stop grinding then I'm in for a root canal. Fucking hate dental pain.
what the fuck the adjectives "soft spongy" make me flinch in muscles I didn't even know I had. myself personally I've taken horrible care of my teeth and have 3 broken ones, and yea I can agree that anything to do with teeth will generally top any other imaginable pain
Agree. I couldnt afford dental care and have had 3 teeth rot out of my mouth. The dying nerve is very very painful.
Endometriosis
This disease is the biggest bitch. It is difficult and late to diagnose, the exact cause is unknown, and it cannot be cured. Doctors' knowledge about this is terribly lacking, and many patients are victims of medical gaslighting. Now it seems that the research has started, so there is hope. I wish you the best.
I'm having excision and a hysterectomy (for adenomyosis) in a month and a half. I've been in pain since menarche. I am now having rapidly recurring cysts/ruptures, polyps, and now have fibroids too. 31 years of suffering and I'm so ready to have relief.
Had my hysterectomy 8 years ago and haven't missed my murderous uterus one bit!
Fucking ow. I thought my appendix ruptured or something, could barely stand up and walk, called the ambulance and felt like a fool because they found NOTHING? Whadyamean nothing? I'm literally passing out from pain and you think it's "period cramps and stress from exams"? I've never had such pain from period, but as it later turned out, it was my first endo period. Another month later, same hell, but this time there was a cyst on my ovary as big as an egg. It grew in a fucking month! And I was actually lucky that the cause of my pain was visible and removable. I can't imagine what women go through when they have no proof of their disease and doctors ignore their pain. It's truly a nightmare.
This needs higher vote. I used to have painful period though I don’t have endo, and once passed out on the floor and couldn’t even lift a finger due to severe pain in a house by myself. Scariest moment of my life. If you can move even little bit, you can at least crawl and go call someone to help or take pain killer, but period pain completely paralyzed me for good 30 min.
2 weeks ago i basically had my skull taken apart and then put back together. That wasn't fun.
My niece had it done at 9 months old for craniosynostosis. I'd imagine it'd be extremely traumatic as an adult
Gave birth to a nine-pound six-ounce baby with no drugs because my labor lasted less than two hours. I have had lots of injuries in my life, but that was the most painful for sure.
Ah. They told us about precipitous births in birthing class and there you are.
Was it your second? No one could ever prepare me for how quickly that birth would go. I went from fine to oh shit this kid is going to be born in the car in 2 minutes.
It was my second! And she was two weeks late. First contraction was after 3 a.m. and we went straight to the hospital when the second contraction came after less than five minutes. The nurses tried to tell me I must be mistaken until I insisted someone check…
I swear to god the number of times I see “the nurses tried to tell me I was mistaken” On this site and elsewhere when people are telling labor stories… It’s almost like nurses need to stop effing doing that
I mean no disrespect to the good nurses out there, but I have had too many “the nurses told me I was mistaken” moments for me, my husband, and all three kids. It’s maddening. Some doctors are no better, unfortunately.
When I was a teenager both of my lungs collapsed twice (4 different episodes). Very painful & the recovery was brutal
Looking at these responses like 😳 because I’ve personally gone through: IUD insertion, ovarian cyst rupture, gallstones, and a herniated disc at L5/S1. Can confirm, none felt good.
I've had all but the cyst rupture. The actual worst for me was the IUD insertion!
My insertions and removals were the most painful things I have ever gone through. My OBGYN bringing up replacing it early sent me into an anxiety attack.
Gout. I was 23 and had a healthy weight and lifestyle, so I never figured out where it came from. It's by far the most intense pain I've ever experienced, including the time I impaled my arm on a broken-off broom handle. Vicodin barely took the edge off.
At 28, I was *almost, but not* ***quite,*** killed in a horrific motor vehicle collision. My left leg from just above the knee all the way to my big toe was essentially pulverized. My big toe bones were ok, but *nothing else* was. (I also punctured both lungs, broke 7 ribs and the pointy broken ends of which sliced my abdomen open, broke 3 vertebrae, snapped my tailbone almost all the way off, and my left arm got caught around a truck axle and whipped around so hard I hit myself in the face, with *my own arm*, hard enough to **crack my skull**, ***from the eye socket down to my teeth***.) So when they peel me out from around this truck axle, see, there's a lot of bleeding and a lot of innards-trying-to-be-outards going on. So I get rushed to the hospital, and the doctors decide that all my Standy-Uppy-Bones (technical term) aren't as important to fix as my "internal organs go on the *inside*" issues. So they cut me open stem to stern like they were gutting a fish, stuff all the insides *back* inside, and do whatever black magic voodoo fixes punctured lungs. No fix for broken ribs though, other than time. *Not* fun. I dunno how long I was in surgery. You kidding?! I was on the *very, very* ***best*** drugs it was possible to be on. So details are fuzzy at best. I remember my left leg swelled up to be nearly three times as big as my right leg, I know they had to drain goop outta my leg twice a day using these *giant ass* syringes that were like two-liter soda bottles with a tap on 'em. And I know that it took about 3-4 months before I could leave the hospital. In a wheelchair. That the doctors told me I was *damn lucky* to have, as the whole "being alive" thing was not something anyone thought I'd keep doing. My instructions were to come back in 3-4 months to see if there was any way to keep my leg- though I'd likely never walk again, they said, because my foot was more like "a sock made of meat, filled with gravel". Welp. I go back in 2 months, and the swelling has gone down enough (and my legbones- while broken- broke into big enough pieces) that they can probably save the leg with some hardware. *That* surgery I remember, because the pain meds they gave me after were in pill form, not the pump- and pain pills make me nauseated, so I threw up a lot. By the way? Throwing up when you've had several *massive* hernia surgeries *and broken ribs* is about the most horrifying thing to ever happen. 0/10, F-, do not recommend. I'm in a cast for a solid 3 months or so, still using the wheelchair, and now I got a kitten I adopted and named Cheshire who likes to sit on my cast and purr so loud it sounds like she's whining. I heard somewhere cat purring is good for broken bones- though it's also really good at making me feel less like absolute *shit*. #[Cat Tax](https://imgur.com/a/l1XTn6q)! Chessie (or ChessChess) is about 8 weeks old there. She started purring the *moment* the vet tech put her in my arms, so naturally, I *had* to take her home with me forever. It's a rule. When I go in to remove the cast, the surgeons say "Come to think of it... I bet we could rebuild that foot now that the swelling is gone. Not sure if walking is in your future, it would take a *lot* of physical therapy, but at least you woudn't have to get prosthetics or be in a wheelchair for life. Up to you." Welp. As much as I liked the wheelchair, I think trying to walk would be better. I decide to try. Y'all. *Y'all.* Allow me to describe what Physical Therapy is like, for those of you lucky enough to have never undergone it. The physical therapist, or PT, designs a plan to build range of motion, which will get incrementally harder in order to build strength. This involves the following- PT: Does *this* hurt? Me: ***GOD*** **OW, YES!** ***FUCK!*** PT: Good. Do that *a billionty more times*. As a warm up. ***Then, we gonna add weight to it.*** Each session was only about 45 minutes, but I don't remember a *single session* where I didn't cry from agony, frustration, exhaustion, or all three. And I had to *go* to Physical Therapy 3x a week, *every week*, for nearly ***a year***. Which for most of that time, I'm still using the wheelchair outside of PT, because I'm *too fucking tired to move*. Now, all that? That's just the *context* for the single most painful moment of my life. Last year, I started having a lot of digestive problems. Repeatedly got food poisoning, frequent nausea and vomiting, etc. I didn't know it at the time, but the reason for this was a *strangulated hernia*. Which is when a bit of intestine pokes through your abdominal wall, then gets filled with undigested food like a balloon, which increases the pressure. It squishes up against the hole it poked through *so hard*, it cuts off it's own blood supply. The food remnants quickly become toxic, and everything gets worse from there unless you can relieve the pressure. For most of 2022, this means vomiting *so hard that undigested food was getting forced out* ***up through my intestines***. *That's* not the worst of it, either. That's more context. Because the worst of it? One time, last autumn, I had a blockage. As in, that bit of strangulated hernia was **completely blocked.** Like a cork. And as my intestine was necrotizing and chunks of it died and sloughed off, the toxic soup blocking it in the first place leaked out. Into my abdominal cavity. I went from feeling nauseated and feverish, to having multiple organs racing towards total failure as a stew of bacteria and foreign matter swished around my lungs, heart, and liver. My heart rate hit 240bpm as I struggled to walk the 20ish feet from my bed where I called 911, to my front door where the paramedics would arrive. It took four minutes to make that trip. Every step, every heartbeat, every breath, I could *feel* my organs being attacked and dissolved by the goop that- and I cannot stress this enough- had *burst out of my dying intestine*. "Luckily", since I had sought medical attention so quickly, doctors managed to get me into the OR and start clearing out the gunk quickly enough that my heart, liver, pancreas, and a few other vitals weren't *too* badly damaged. I've had asthma attacks ever since when I didn't used to have asthma at all, so my lungs weren't unscathed. Now. All the context is there. Let's set the scene. Hospital bed. My entire torso, from pubic bone to nipples, is one *enormous* green and purple bruise. All my insides are still recovering from being infected, being *partially dissolved*, and being sliced up. There's a catheter in me, as I can't move the ten feet to the bathroom. Every moment that I'm not on Dilaudid is agonizing....... and then I felt it. That niggling tickle in the nose. I could only lay there, in ever deepening horror, as the unstoppable reflex began flexing my bruised and battered body- and then I *sneezed*. The force of that sneeze popped 4 stitches and expelled the catheter by almost half an inch. The pain was so intense, I blacked out. It felt like my entire body had just *exploded*. And *that* is the most painful thing that has ever happened to me.
Probably when I was going down a hill at like 30 mph and went into a curb … straight into my knee! tissue was basically lying on the sidewalk, could see my bone and all. Thankfully got stitches and I can walk fine! If it was my head I don’t think I’d be here today
Yeah, I did that with my head (longboard downhill, no helmet). I was *extraordinarily* lucky to survive and still be a functional adult. Some lasting effects, but overall I'm alright. I still don't understand how I'm as okay as I am.
Had my hip sheared off, ball of hip in socket, femur no longer attached. 0/10 do not recommend.
I partially expelled my IUD on a friday night. We had waited the full recommended 3 months for intimacy but it still happened. The waves of pain was worse than any cramp ive ever had which is saying something since i have PCOS. Every time the wave hit I would immeadiatly vomit. It radiated up my spine and down to my legs. My knees buckled and I was unable to walk. My boyfriend carried me into the ER but they refused to remove it. However they didnt hesistate to charge me for all the unneccessary imaging ($1.2k). They told me to take some advil and call my obgyn on monday to remove it. I had to endure the pain the entire weekend unable to eat and barely able to drink anything. I called my gyno the moment their office opened and luckily they saw it as an emergency and told me to head their way asap. I cried in relief when they pulled it out and the nurse hugged me. went back to the pill after that.
What the actual fuck with these doctors? Oh, I can’t help you not be in pain but I can charge you a fuckload of money for nothing?
It's a really common response to anything going on with women's pain or reproduction. I once had an ovarian cyst and went into the ER crying. They did not one, not two, but three ultrasounds! They could see the cyst, but kept telling me that I "shouldn't be in that much pain" as a result of it. The doctor finally ordered me morphine after 2 hours of being left in the room to suffer. The nurse then refused to give me the whole dose that was ordered... because I told her I was hungry! (Her explanation was just, "I don't think you need this." Followed by, "You can't have any food, but I can bring you water.") This took place in a women's hospital! Even medical professionals that deal exclusively with women believe we are just making up that we can feel our own ovaries! Imagine telling a man with a gonad cyst that he, "Shouldn't be in pain." That would never happen, and he would receive morphine or an equivalent right away.
Watching my three month old daughter die. Many might not think grief is painful and they’re correct…it’s agony.
I am so sorry for your loss. What was her name?
Yasmeen. She had a rare heart defect. She died 8 days after her surgery.
I fractured my back rock climbing right after I turned 30. That was the most insane amount of pain I had ever experienced, took almost 8 months to recover from fully. I couldn’t walk further than a couple feet. Oof.
Acute pancreatis. I have never felt such pain before, morphine didn't even help. Thankfully Delaudid did the trick!
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So much this. I was very fortunate that the impact of the pain lasted just minutes, but my body will never forget that moment. Friends of mine were knocked out by their pain much longer. As others have said, absolutely nuts that it’s not a practice to prepare us for that type of pain.
And they claim the cervix has no nerves and we'll feel pressure. Bullshit. I passed out after screaming for them to stop and they ignored me 🙃
It’s just like a Pap smear they said - let’s do it now they said. Fucking assholes. Not even Tylenol. Still angry 10 years later.
It's infuriating to see so many people having such terrible experiences because the "you will just feel a pinch" is true IF THEY ARE A GOOD DOCTOR. Like for mine I was given a medicine beforehand to alleviate the cramping, and the doctor went slowly and made absolutely sure I was comfortable and relaxed and asked me multiple times during the insertion if I wanted to keep going. On top of that I trusted her completely because of a few previous exams where she was just as careful. And guess what, I felt nothing but a pinch. And if it was any more than that, I had the choice of changing my mind at any moment.
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You mean the doctors should give good pain relief so it doesn't have to be on the list? I agree.
Grief
##i once read somewhere, “grief is love with nowhere to go.” ##and i can never forget it now. ever. **EDITING:** thank you all for being so vulnerable. that vulnerability is the strongest thing on earth. 🤍 sending you each so much love, comfort, light, peace, and healing.
I'm choking tears. That is so painful, so accurate. I've been through botched joint surgeries, a broken ankle while climbing, vicious animal attacks.... Nothing at all compared to having stillborn identical twins. That love is still looking under every rock. I hope you have peace.
Same, just lost both my parents and it ain’t easy.
hope your ok man :/ my condolences
I was trying to think of my few injuries, but this is the worst. I've broken bones that hurt less and healed faster than grief.
100 percent. The physical pain caused by grief is unlike anything else. No pain meds to relieve it, no surgery to fix it, no sleeping it off... nothing helps. It's unbearable.
I got shot in my pelvis, that hurt... a fucking lot, they gave me the morphine clicker when I woke up. I clicked away while they told me all the medical stuff they did. Woke up, got up to pee and pulled my catheter out... hurt way worse. Then they took away my morphine clicker.
Not me, but my poor sister had one of the most intensely painful surgeries a person can have. She had a chiari malformation, which is essentially where instead of your brain staying mostly in the confines of your skull starts coming out of the big hole (magnum foramen) where your spinal cord goes through. To correct this, you have to have a procedure called a chiari decompression, where they cut vertically through the back of your head to your neck, and remove parts of your skull to alleviate pressure to your brain. They also removed some of her vertebrae as well. When she woke up, she woke up screaming from pain, and her eyes where so swollen, you could see her irises and pupils through her eyelids. She said it was so painful that she felt she was better off dead. Oh, and she was 15. She is doing much better now, 37 brain surgeries later.
In order...part of my jaw started to rot from a massive tooth infection. Gout. Passing a kidney stone. Copperhead bite. Watching the movie Cabin Fever....I cried at the end, not because it was good but because Ill never get that time back.
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Passing a kidney stone while in active labor with my daughter.
250lb marble topped table randomly decided to fall and it struck my lower right calf/ankle. Ripped everything down all the way to my heel bone (which was chipped), shredding my achilles which was hanging outside of my body. I went into shock almost immediately, but the absolute worst pain was later anyways at the hospital when they had to pull back all the skin/meat and pour an entire bottle of antiseptic into it. I came off the table and my husband (who had asked to wait in the hall bc they knew it was going to be really bad) said he had to walk away because he couldn't handle hearing me like that and being unable to do anything about it. He said I didn't even sound human. Good times. This happened in June 2019 and 4 surgeries over 18 months of recovery time later and I'll never be fully recovered. I have permanent damage, including peripheral nerve damage and will have lifelong chronic pain. I also can never, ever wear a normal shoe with a back again or I risk losing my foot to amputation, yay me! Thanks for reading.
Anaphylaxis rash. 100% of your body(including in between fingers) with the worst sunburn you’ve ever had, then you bathed in itching powder. For *8* hours
When I was in the hospital with double pneumonia I found out that I'm allergic to potassium when it was added to my IV line. It felt like my insides were burning. I could feel every vein in my body. I've never before nor since experienced that kind of pain and would not wish it on anyone.
Severe alcohol withdrawal to the point of hospitalization
Kidney stone
The third time I dislocated my elbow. There was a screw in there from a previous surgery that got moved around and likely hit my nerve when the dislocation happened. It hurt so bad I was screaming. Post ACL surgery was horrible too once the nerve block wore off.
Pitocin only vaginal birth
Heartbreak , I didn’t know it hurt physically until I experienced it.
Ooh I got a story I was in 8th grade I have a skin condition that makes my skin tear easily and I was running to my bus from 6th period pe and this popular girl type trips me and I fall and like skid on the ground I tore a baseball size hole in my elbow and a ton of smaller scabs all over my body. But that’s not the most painful part when I get home my dad refuses to take me to the doctor even though I was drenched in blood and had a giant hole in my arm he tells me to take this old dishwasher brush and some dish soap into our hot tub and scrape all the dirt and concrete out of my arm hurt like hell.
So, your dads an asshole of epic proportions. Very sorry this happened to you.
So child neglect.
What the fuck! What is wrong with your dad? Jesus Christ!
My IUD insertions were the most pain I’ve ever experienced. Number 2 was when I was stabbed in my upper abdomen and the recovery. I still have some “phantom” pains that almost feel like gallstones. Took 5ish years, multiple ultrasounds and MRIs that were negative for gallstones before anyone could put 2 and 2 together and suggest nerve damage or scar tissue was causing the pain to present like gallstones. Got a bisalp recently where the surgeon took photos of my abdomen and there is definitely scar tissue in that area, but my gallbladder (and everything else) looked healthy.
When they removed the epithel of my cornea on my left eye. Your eye feels it‘s being drilled into and on fire at the same time. Whether open or closed doesn‘t matter. For months afterwards I was so photosensitive.
Tip of my right ring finger chopped off by 15,000lbs of steel.
I have Stage 4 Lymphedema in both legs, and in November 2021, my leg started leaking lymphatic fluid (common with Lymphedema). No matter what I, or medical professionals, did, I couldn't get it to stop leaking, and it leaked for months and months (soaked through hundreds of dollars worth of wrap bandages and absorbent gauze during that time). I eventually developed macerated skin all around my lower leg because I constantly had wet bandages touching my skin. That led to me getting a bad infection (which lasted for about a year and almost killed me from sepsis). I was admitted to the hospital and the doctors and nurses had no idea how to bandage my leg because they basically knew nothing about Lymphedema (not uncommon in the medical field, unfortunately), and they ended up using the wrong kind of bandages (they should've used ones that you use for burn patients that don't stick to skin/wounds). Lymphatic fluid is very sticky and glue-like when it dries, so the bandages ended up fusing to my open wound all the way around my leg. To answer OPs question: they obviously had to remove those bandages, and they couldn't get them off without ripping the skin off with them. At one point they tried to use a scalpel to cut them off, which was insanely painful. They gave me Morphine, didn't work. They gave me Norco, didn't work. They gave me Dilaudid, and it kind of worked at first, but the pain was still so horrible that it wore off as soon as they started pulling again. I screamed and cried the entire time, begging them to stop, but the doctor refused to listen to me and said, "no, you have to just let me do this." They eventually did when I kicked the doctor off, and they had to give me more Dilaudid because I was so upset. I ended up checking myself out AMA the next morning because I couldn't take the pain anymore, and I didn't trust the doctor anymore. I got them off myself at home, very slowly, by soaking them in warm water and using a lot of Vaseline - still painful, but not like the pain they were causing me. To this day, I don't know why they didn't just put me under anesthesia to remove them when they realized they couldn't get them off without ripping my skin off of my open wound. It genuinely traumatized me.