Ask Lemmy

1. Severely herniated disc - I screamed at an ER doc that wouldn’t give me an MRI (or at least a referral) and tried to send me home with prednisone and ibuprofen. I had herniated my disc before but not as bad so knew what was up and I had taken prednisone for it and it just makes it worse. Doctor’s are so quick to be like “this is drug seeking behavior“ and I’m like yep can you also give me an MRI so I can be one step closer to treatment. Eventually got spinal surgery and mostly feel better.

2. migraines

3. sun poisoning on shoulders

4. colitis flare up

5. broken arm

6. sprained ankle

Pretty sure I have undiagnosed IBS. Occasionally when my turds are overly firm, usually after a pizza or pasta night, I get a sharp shooting pain right up the butthole. It's momentary, but it's the only thing I can confidently call a 10/10 pain. In those split seconds it's blinding.

Physical pain? Migraine.

I have had kidney stone, childbirth, and broken bones, also once a torn Achilles tendon, all hurt bad, none were as bad as a bad migraine. That is the worst pain I've survived. So bad I got hallucinations, crying and puking up anything even a bare sip of water, nothing but pain exists. Migraine is by far the worst physical pain I have felt.

Realization, rejection, change, a swift kick to the nuts, growth.

Iritis/uveitis - My cornea detached due to the heavy pressure inside my eye. The most painful thing EVER.

Kidney stones - Close second

Motorcycle accident at highway speed that jammed gravel into my cranial cavity and left me looking like watermelon-head for 3 months - I'd still rather have this than kidney stones or iritis...

Migraines and kidney stones. Just no.

1 Kidney stones. 2 tear in intestine. 3 fractured vertebrae

Getting cheated on.

Motorcycle accident. Broken collarbone was the worst part. Broken ribs, internal bleeding, and later an infection with high fever that put me on antibiotics for a while were the least of it surprisingly.

The accident itself wasn't so bad due to adrenaline, however having one piece of the collarbone almost puncture my lung, and the other piece pop out of the skin a little at the top was uncomfortable.

The absolute worst part was recovery. The two pieces of collarbone rubbing together constantly, having to lie on my back still to sleep, while resting my arm in the sling on top of broken ribs. Unable to roll in my sleep gave me severe back pain. I basically had little to no sleep for the first 3 months. Was prescribed painkillers that didn't do much until they upgraded me to tramidol. I didn't react well to it so I could choose between strong pain and no sleep or strong nausia and vomiting with also no sleep.

Painkillers don't take away the sensation of bone rubbing on bone. The memory alone makes me shudder to this day

Tooth fractured about 90% through at the gum line after I got hit by a car while biking.

It would be 'fine' (painful but just really sore like the rest of me) if I bit down on that tooth for a bit to fully seat it, but every time I talked, ate, or otherwise accidentally jostled it it would be like someone jabbed a red hot poker into my face - the crack went across the root and any bit of movement pulled on it.

It was a rough two weeks to get it looked at and a root canal done. I kept getting woken up by searing pain if I moved a bit during the night.

Testicular torsion, left untreated for a minimum of 12 hours when I started puking from the pain, that's when I got to the ER. Some anti-nausea and morphine through an IV got me into a ultrasound when the motherfucking resident found the twist and made sure I was on an active dose of morphine and tried to untwist it without anesthesia. Jesus fucking lord Christ in hell, nothing can't undo that pain. (Cue 17 years later I discovered it helped me develop PTSD ).

Right up there was a pneumothorax where the ketamine didn't work and the pain meds were pretty shit when they put in the emergency chest tube. You know, scalpel through skin, muscle whatever is between ribs and plueral cavity. I was tripping balls so I felt the stabbing while I left my body and observed getting cut into (probably from the mirror light above me). Also contributed to PTSD I learned.

Not so bad as those but still almost made me puke from pain was an EMG on my hand to diagnose how bad my carpal tunnel was. The neurologist went straight for a nerve I guess and is was a lightning bolt of pain that didn't stop until he took the needle out.

You're probably thinking now "Jesus you've probably got a high pain tolerance" and no, quite the opposite actually. Prior to some intense therapy, pain in any amount always led to panic attacks, as my brain had made a leap from pain = bad to pain = literally dying.

Was bending a piece of sheet metal on a 10 ft. bending brake. Stupidly had both my hands in the jaws trying to adjust the workpiece when the jaws partially closed on my hands. Imagine having all your fingers sandwiched between two thick steel plates because that's basically what happened. It wasn't really pushing down but just the weight of the jaws alone was enough that I was stuck and couldn't get my hands out.

It didn't hurt initially. Just felt like very intense pressure. I started hollering for help. Eventually another guy in the shop saw me and came running over to open the jaws. As soon as he did, I got this sharp, shooting pain in all my fingers. I think I hopped all over the shop, screaming obscenities. Had to just hold ice packs all day to keep the swelling down.

Didn't lose any of my fingers. Didn't even break any bones, somehow. Just bruised them really severely. It hurt like a son of a bitch but I was incredibly lucky.

For me, a bad gallstone. Pain enough to make me throw up twice and they had to give me two doses of morphine before it worked well enough.

I was stung by a bullet ant (see username).

I've had a few teeth get broken in half horizontally without getting fully knocked out.

Runner up is a wrist fracture at multiple locations, and the two don't even come close - the teeth were WAY more painful.

lemmy.ml

1. Full bowel blockage
2. Ruptured appendix

With number 1, by the time I got to the hospital my shirt was wringing wet with sweat, vomit, tears, and blood. I took it off and told the ambulance driver to just chuck it in the bin lol

Childbirth, my hand was killing me.

I heard wild stories from paramedic about people with chronic pain.

It is not uncommon to get calls from relatives like: " Our grandma fell, broke leg, and didn't want to bother you. She is on other side of city and we can't get to her."

And it turns out that it is open fracture but because she is in pain all the time, she didn't think it is big deal.

pancreatitis. I spent half of my 2021 in the hospital. it's apparently more painful than childbirth, it made me faint and my skin was yellow.

I was shot in the eye with a bb gun when I was in 9th grade. It was absolutely miserable. Right after it happened, I had to practically get carried back. My cousin and one of my friends held me up on either side because I couldn't see anything and wanted to just lay there due to how severe the pain was.

The trip to the emergency room is a story too. A nurse in the ICU thought I was hit by a baseball despite the paperwork and asked me, a teenager that definitely didn't get to the hospital myself, if I knew my mom when she returned from the bathroom. After getting to the ER, I vomited up the entire stack of pancakes and the half dozen bologna sandwiches I had eaten that day (I was 14, teenage hunger). 2/10, do not recommend.

Gout in my knee. Gout anywhere has been bad. The knee was the worst.

No gout attacks in years though, keeping it under control.

Gout. Big toe on fire, throbbing with pain, joint swollen until there are no discernable features. Even a feather touching the area is enough to generate hot searing pain. The constant urge to 'pop' the big toe joint set against the impossibility to actually wriggle the toe without passing out.

Should drink lots of water to flush out the uric acid, but every trip to the bathroom has to be carefully considered because walking there takes 2-3 minutes of grabbing on to nearby things/people while stepping awkwardly on the outside edge of the foot, instead of 20 seconds of normal walking.

I've had severe tooth pain for a couple of weeks (a cyst - the pain killed the nerves in some of my teeth), and 3 days of gout until the meds worked well enough to walk less painfully were worse.

loss