Ask Lemmy

Ive been stabbed and burned but the most painful has been a really bad ankle sprain where my ankle/foot went a full 90°. Still have 2 fucked up toes from it. Second was a tailbone injury that I still don't know what happened.

Physical pain? I've had a spinal tap, countless perforated eardrums, dental nerve pain, broken bones and dislocated joints. You might consider me quite unfortunate and each of these is a story in itself. (The burst eardrum is definitely the worst of these, in severity and relentlessness) So anyway, I'm no stranger to physical pain.

BUT, I'm even more unlucky in that I suffered from a pretty rare condition called recurrent corneal erosion syndrome for three years after somebody poked me in the eye accidentally whilst he was trying to do the Saturday Night Fever move.
It's hard to describe the pain, but I'm told it's a contender for the most painful condition known to medical science. A woman once popped her own eye out with a spoon rather than continue to live with the condition. The cornea (layer of transparent tissue covering the pupil/iris) is pretty bad at repairing itself. Like the other tissues in your body, it attempts to bond with nearby tissue when it's ruptured. (Think on how a cut on your hand heals). Except with RCE, the cornea preferentially adheres to the eyelid instead of itself. So, when you sleep, the front of your eye "heals" onto the eyelid, and then it tears open when you next open your eyes. Each time you sleep, the wound gets worse, until you can no longer open or close your eyes without agonising pain. So you are utterly sleep deprived, unable to blink for fear of the worst pain you've ever experienced every single time you do, and it hurts a good amount constantly anyway. It's as good an example of your own body torturing you as you could ask for. And it goes on and on and on. There's only one treatment which works, which is a type of laser eye therapy, for which the expense is very high. So I had to wait 3 years. The only way I managed to continue functioning was when I was allowed anaesthetic eye drops, which became like the air in my lungs. I would have to beg for them regularly, and I never had enough. Every night and morning I had to remember to squirt gel into my eye before closing/opening it, which would stop the healing effect IF I was lucky. Had the laser therapy not worked I don't know what I would've done. It's been eight years now, but it's "recurrent", so there's no guarantee it's gone for good. I wear glasses that I don't strictly need now, to make sure my eye is at least partially protected at all times. Sometimes, especially if I've drunk alcohol and I'm dehydrated, I get a little reminder that it's there. I live in fear.

Severe gastritis. It felt like I was run through by a spear. Fun times.

Fucking kidney stone.

Cluster Headaches.

Gout flair up

Physical - dry socket

Emotional - nawww I'm good lol

Physically…can’t compare to much of this thread, probably one of my surgeries.

Emotionally though, losing my dad. Worse than I could have ever imagined and still so painful.

Call your parents/loved ones, folks. It’s worth the time and effort; if not for them, then for your future self.

Hard to rate.

When I was a kid, I once feel out of a tree and feel on my lower back strait onto a small stump (maybe 3-4 inches across). Also, as a kid, I was jumping back and forth over a hole. We were installing basement egress windows I was jumping over the hole that was dug. This particular hole had like a water connection or something, a white pipe with a white cap. Anywho fell directly on my lower back of that too.

Some years ago I was doing an obstacle course 5K and I severely rolled my ankle, but I kept going and even did the vertical wall. It didn't hurt so much that day but it hurt like a son of a gun the next few months.

Of course one can't forget migraines. Sound hurts, light hurts, the pain that you have also hurts and there's not much you can do about it.

In high school, some girl thought it was okay and funny to repeatedly punch me in the nuts. She only stopped because her brother came out and stopped her.

Paper cut. Mic drop.

Appendicitis. I described it as feeling like a Chestburster from Alien was gestating inside me and ready to chew its way out of me at any second. I needed near-lethal amounts of painkillers while awaiting surgery to not feel like I was about to die.

For comparison, I broke my foot last year and it still wasn't anywhere near as painful as appendicitis.

1. Tooth ache
2. Ear ache
3. Calf cramp

I fell from a playground equipment and a firm metal pole hit my shin

Fell into traffic as a kid and got hit by a car mirror on the back of my head. Split my noggin wide open. Showers were the most painful part. My parents would put a chair in the shower for me to sit in while one of them held me up because the pain was so bad I'd pass out. The shampoo was prescribed to me and it was like lava on my head.

an infected pilonidal cyst

Stretched my leg too much

Pancreatitis. Intravenous dilaudid for that.

I had major gallstone attacks a couple times a week for like 6-8 months before I finally drove myself to the ER at 2am after being woken by one. Was in surgery 3hrs later.

Was utterly excruciating pain in your abdomen, and it just grows and grows and grows, and lasts from 20minutes to over an hour. Nothing ever touched the pain either, and my PCP misdiagnosed it as extreme acid reflux and had me on Prilosec for months.

0/10, do not recommend. Plus not having a gallbladder kinda sucks ass.

A broken wisdom tooth with one of the parts rubbing against the nerve that passes through that side of the lower jaw. Definitely would not recommend, it did cost me ~$2k to pull those wisdom teeth (or what remained of them for the lower ones) but it was well worth it.

Edit: Found the x-ray image of that tooth, the dentist told me the white line running past the bottom of the broken tooth is a nerve.

After I dislocated my kneecap, getting the ski boot pulled off.

I had gout.

Omg.

I pulled my sciatic nerve. Was bed ridden for a month

It's a close call between kidney stone (the initial dislodgement from the kidney into the urether) and labour... Kidney stone wins because it had the element of surprise, extremely rapid escalation (0 to 100 in less than 10 minutes), and unlike labour contractions it just. kept. going nonstop until I got those sweet sweet IV drugs.

Toe-to-heel second-degree burns on both feet.

I was 10, and stood up in sand that had been heated by a portable barbecue. The irony is, one of the adults had moved the grill so nobody would step in the coals. It had sunk its little wire legs and had been sitting directly on the sand for a couple of hours.

I stood up, screamed and ran for the ocean. About halfway there, the blisters puffed up and I had to crawl until someone figured out what was happening and hauled me into the water.

Spinal tap. The pain went to 11. It was not fun.