What's the most pain you've ever experienced?

[TEENEE]

Lacerated liver was the worst pain. I thought I was going to die, even prayed that if I was going to die for it to happen quickly. Gallbladder gets 2nd place in my pain book.

 

[lesliekatya]

My husband opened a door on my big toe and bent the toenail up. I've had a few painful experiences, but that was a doozy. (Boy, now that I think about it, other than childbirth, they were all on my feet. I guess I just have unlucky feet! )

 

[PatriciaH]

Watching my husband loose his sister (sudden/car accident.) We had to fly from FL to CA and deal with everything (including recovering what we could from the totaled car-horrible.) His parents could not do it. She was the second child they lost. Awful.

 

[2pinwheels]

Shingles. Especially during the pressure of a hurricane.

 

[Terapin]

It's a toss up between severe migraines and childbirth with a posterior baby. I've given birth four times and had four posterior babies at some point in the labour.

The worst I have ever felt was after the birth of my first. I had a traumatic birth at the end (thick med, 10lb baby, huge hemorrhage, and I had had a very long prodromal labour. By the time I came home from the hospital I was so sleep deprived that I couldn't sleep - I think it was a bit of PTSD. I was desperate for sleep but couldn't relax enough to sleep. And my haemoglobin had dropped 45 points and I was very anemic. I have never been closer to collapse, mentally, emotionally and physically. I had a lovely normal home birth 18 months later and that was soooo much better.

Emotionally, the worst was when my son was diagnosed with neurofibromatosis at age 3. I cried and cried, so worried about him and his future. It seemed awful and horrible. NF can be a terrible disease. However, he's 18 now and doing great. He's had complication such as a spinal tumour and a tumour on his optic nerve, but they are stable. So for now he's good!

 

[whitney250]

Worst pain I've experienced was when I had an inflamed disc in my lower back. I remember I sneezed and I hit my knees in major pain, any kind of bumps in the car would bring me to tears, even taking strong pain pills didn't help much. It took almost an entire year to completely heal from that injury, and I still am not entirely sure how I did it!

 

[Terapin]

I had three out of my four babies in a posterior position, all natural births. Painful but I got through it. I think the worse pain was breaking bones. When I was ten, I saw someone on TV in a circus riding on two horses - standing up with one foot on one horse and one foot on the other horse. Well, we were living on a farm. We had horses! I could do that! So I got two of our horses, put bridles on both of them, led them up to the fence and climbed onto one. Got the other one close enough that I could put one foot on the back of each horse, and clucked to them. Well, one went left and one went right and I broke my leg. That hurt a lot. Then a few years later I was riding my horse with friends and we decided to race to the end of the field. I was riding bareback, but I did it all the time so I felt I'd be fine. When my horse reached the fence at the end of the field, instead of stopping, she jumped the fence - and I wasn't expecting it, so I fell off. Broke the other leg. Yeah, not fun. Plus I had to ride that horse back to the farm crying in pain the whole way.

I've broken several bones and childbirth was worse for me. I've had 3 unmedicated births, and my last I had an epidural after hours and hours of non-progressing labour and a need to augment. I've had two hospital births and two home births. The epidural with the last one was nice but the car ride to the hospital sucked so bad I am not planning on an epidural with my 5th baby due this winter.

 

[Slayd]

Tearing my ACL and meniscus was by far the most painful thing I have ever experienced.

 

[Bilberry]

An intestinal flare. Having an IBD condition they happen from time to time. It's basically intense stomach pain, and fatigue lasting 24 to 48 hours.

 

[TheDisneyNurse]

Getting stung by a jellyfish takes the cake. I'm just the type of person that gets injured often-- bad luck combined with my lefty clumsiness. Nothing was more painful than being stung by that jelly. Out of nowhere I felt like I was stabbed in the leg. I was frantic thinking a shark bit me or something, but when I looked at my leg, nothing was there. The stabbing was replaced maybe 10 mins later with the most intense throbbing pain I've ever felt. Clear as day that it was neurological. It traveled higher and higher up my leg. I was frozen in place for 20-30 minutes until it finally subsided.

Funny thing is, once that passed, I felt not an ounce more of pain. Had a little redness where I was stung, but that was it. In hindsight I really should've went to a lifeguard station, but I couldn't walk far enough with the pain, and my friend did literally nothing to help me. Good times!

 

[Deb in IA]

Me too! Same thing but my leg never went numb. I wound up with foot drop (right foot totally dead)...couldn't walk. Had to crawl to the toilet and scream in agony while attempting to sit up to pee. It started on a Sunday, the searing agonizing pain shooting down from my lower right back, down my leg into my foot. A chiropractor nearly crippled me on Monday (foot drop began after he "adjusted" me). On Wednesday my good friend had her DH (a pain specialist) order me an emergency MRI. An hour after the MRI he called me and told me to lay flat on my back and not to move until he got me in to a surgeon...he said my L5-S1 was wrecked and I needed immediate surgery. He got me in to an ortho the next day, Thursday. Surgeon took one look at me crying on his exam table unable to sit up and then the MRI and scheduled me for his next opening, first thing Tuesday (that was Easter weekend). I was in agony right up until the anesthesia took me under, and when I woke up in recovery I was 95% pain free. Just sore from the surgery. The surgeon was standing over me with a huge grin, holding a jar with my disc in it and proudly proclaiming it the largest thing he'd ever removed. Apparently the disc had not only herniated, but it had jammed into my spinal cord like hair clogged in a drain, and he had to call in a neurosurgeon midway through to oversee the discectomy.

Best thing I've ever done for myself. Had to have another discectomy of the same spot 4 1/2 years later though when it happened again. Next time it will likely be a fusion.

My experience was pretty much the same. I went to surgery too, and my surgeon plopped my disc into a specimen cup and went out to show it to my husband, who was waiting, telling him, "Look at the size of this disc I took out from your wife's spine!" I pretty much has immediate relief after I recovered from the surgery, and now, 10 years on, I am so glad it has never come back.

 

[3 MEN AND A BOAT]

April 15
It hurts down to my soul to write that check every year.

 

[lilia78]

I have a very high tolerance for pain. I had all four of my kids naturally without much issue. For me the two worst times I've been in pain was my first tattoo, it hurt so bad I thought I was going to pass out, they even had to stop for a while and then the other one was my nip piercing. Wow that one hurts! I don't know how anyone would get the other one done!

 

[Disneychick75]

Lower back pain from bulging and desiccated disks has been my worst. Was in pain for the past week with back pain BUT one time a few years ago, the disk moved- it was horrible. I've gone through labor, surgeries, and shingles. Not one of those compared to that back pain. I was gagging and thinking suicidal thoughts for the 2 hours that it lasted.

 

[winterman]

My worst physical pain was caused by sinusitis. Waves of intense pain in my left cheek. I don't remember the pain of childbirth, but I'm sure it was considerable because I delivered 2 kids (3 1/2 years apart) that were 10+ pounds without any kind of anesthesia.

My worst emotional pain was DH's diagnosis of stage 4 lung cancer, his illness and then his death 13 weeks later. Perhaps the hardest part was when the doctor needed to talk to us on the phone (we were still at the MRI site) and DH told me to take the call. I then had to tell him what she had said.

 

[~PixieTink~]

Tearing my ACL and MCL in my Senior Year of College while landing a dismount on my Vault in a Gymnastics Meet.

 

[Magpie]

I have a malformed esophageal flap, which basically means there's nothing stopping my stomach acid from sloshing up and down my esophagus all day long. Most of the time it doesn't bother me (the doctor was actually amazed to see that there's been no scarring or ulceration). But, when I was a kid and wasn't eating quite as well as I do now, I used to get horrendous stomach aches.

Imagine you've got an alien in your gut, only instead of trying to dig its way out your chest, like a proper chest-burster, this one's decided to go the other way - out your lower back. Only, it's got lost on the way, and now it's clawing around inside of you in a panic. That's pretty much what it feels like when I get a stomach ache.

I used to tell my mum that my stomach hurt, but no one ever takes stomach aches seriously in a kid. Eventually I learned to stop complaining. I'd go to bed and curl up and wait it out. I was 20 when a friend of mine suggested I should see a doctor about it!

They put me on some kickass stomach-calming drugs for a bit, and ever since then I know not to eat things that upset my stomach (too much meat, fat, acidic foods, etc).

Childbirth was no problem. I didn't have any meds, and sure it hurt a bit, but nothing at all like those stomach aches. Labour was a good, productive, working kind of hurt - like pushing a car uphill or something - not an "I'm hurt!" kind of hurt. I'll take a working-hurt over a hurt-hurt any day of the week.

 

[BadgerGirl84]

The 60 minutes before each of my children were born. Unmedicated births. Seriously considering an epidural with this baby, but with the last two, things moved so fast there was absolutely no time for one--yay.

 

[mickeyboat]

For "temporary pain" it was the Ring of Fire with DD#2's unmedicated birth. I begged for an epidural but there was not time.

For "long term pain" it was when my incompetent doctor diagnosed my sinus infection as trigeminal neuralgia. I was was in pain for almost six months before it was correctly diagnosed and treated.

 

[daughtersrus]

I've had 3 c-sections, one of which they weren't able to numb me completely because of some torn muscles in my abdomen, labor, gallbladder attacks for 3 months before it could be removed, appendectomy, abscessed tooth, impacted wisdom teeth removed with only Novocain, broken bones...but the worst physical pain was when I was standing on a chair trying to reach something and I fell off landing on the edge of an open storage trunk. It knocked the wind out of me so badly that I thought I was going to die. I had bruised ribs and bruise across my lung. I learned my lesson!

Emotional pain was Sep 11,2001. That was the day that we found out the name of the disease that causes so many medical problems for DD#3. Because of everything that was going on in our country that day, no one woulld give us the name of it until the geneticist could get a flight back to Chicago. After hours back and forth on the phone, they agreeded to give us the name if I promised not to look it up. I agreeded but quickly broke the promise. The 3 short blurbs I found all said children die before age 5. DD was 7. Thankfully DD is still within but we missed the chance for the only treatment, BMT, because she already had too many of the symptoms. BMT will stop the progression but won't correct the damage.