ITT: The worst physical pain you've ever experienced

[Listi]

Ouch onion, ******* ouch. Mine's bad, but it can't come close to touching that. Jesus christ...

 

[volatility smile]

Last 250m of a 2k. Probably worse than it seems, since it's entirely self-inflicted.

 

[westinghouse]

Appendix.

 

[AJL]

Most recently, I was manually closing a double-width, solid wood, articulated garage door--approx 300-400 lbs-- (electric closer hadn't been attached yet) when the door slipped a couple feet from the floor, and next thing I know I'm looking at 2 of my fingers completely closed up between two sections. I yelled for help, but as no one could hear me, I did one of those adrenaline numbers and lifted the door up with my left hand enough to remove my fingers. They came out looking cartoon-like; flattened literally by half, broken, though otherwise intact.

Actually, the most excruciating short term pain I've experienced was from something that sounds fairly innocuous, maybe even mildly amusing--hemorrhoids. Had 'em for years, sometimes they flare up, itch, burn, etc. If you've had em you know what I mean. Very rarely they become so inflamed and swollen that they hurt to the point where you're afraid to cough and just urinating can cause a shock wave that rises from your ass to the top of your head (when you stop the stream and your rectal muscles "clench&quot. About 5 years ago, they became so inflamed I had to see a doctor, which took some effort cause at that point I'm scuttling around like a crab. So doc checks it out and says yeah, looks pretty bad, I'm gonna get a surgeon to look at this. So, down to surgery, and the surgeon gets me prone on the bench, takes a look and says "well, we could be looking at surgical removal, but that's not always a good outcome, or we could just try to massage the blood vessels to 'redistribute' the blood'. It might hurt a little" Okay, I said, if you think it will alleviate some of the pain lets try. Suffice to say every muscle in my body, including my toes, was clenched for that 5 mins or so as he "massaged", i.e., basically grabbed the swollen veins (roids) and forced the blood back up by squeezing them between his fingers. I wanted to scream, but I'd lost the ability to make any sounds. In hindsight (yea, I know...) I realized the bastard should have used some kind of anesthesia, local or otherwise, but I think he was seeing me "on the fly" as a favor to my GP. I scuttled out of there in worse pain than when I entered, and it took at least several hours til it improved. During and immediately following the procedure I got to thinking about how much pain could the human body withstand, and what must it feel like to have your body wracked with cancer, or have a limb amputated without benefit of anesthesia? Fun stuff, but only relatively short-term, and nothing approaching some of the other harrowing tales herein (near double-amputation, etc...)

 

[Benzito]

Originally Posted by onion

I live in Charlotte NC. I really don't know if it was a paramedic of EMT honestly. And as far as your second question, I'd rather it not of happen. I should probably clarify as well, that money is spread over 65 years. It's not like I'm ballin' in insurance money or anything.
65 years?! ****, you can work and make more than that! Assuming you aren't working as a runner or anything. Seriously, I can't imagine any amount of money can make up for the physical pain you had to go through. It isn't like you just chipped a tooth or something. The worst non-life threatening injury, in terms of pain, was dropping a thirty pound porcelain pedestal sink on my big toe. I was on the phone with a friend and she damn near had a panic attack hearing me scream out in pain as I tried to drag myself to the kitchen for a bag of ice and a needle to lance the toenail bed (filled immediately with a lot of nasty blackish-red blood).

 

[texas_jack]

Originally Posted by Listi

I think I'm winning here... I'd rate a dry socket, second most pain i've had, 5, at the most vs mine's 10.

I was 14 or 15, I was night skiing with one of my friends. Going as fast as I could and hit a nearly invisible "grooming error aka big ice jump" just as the hill started to get steep so I got an enormous amount of air. My friend said I was a good deal above the top of his head. I hit the ground, and rolled for 4-5 seconds. I told my friend I think I broke my leg, and he was like "it doesn't look broken... see what happens if you move it?" and when I tried to move m leg upwards, I noticed a bump forming at the UNDERSIDE of my leg. I realized my leg was entirely spun around.

So, I broke my femur, my leg spun around so I cut up lots of the muscles in my legs pretty badly, luckily I didn't hit my femoral artery. And now I'm on top of a hill having to get dragged down, horrible horrible horrible. The bone pain was constant and searing, and the muscle spasms were unbearably painful. Got to the hospital, shot up with loads of morphine, cue 4-5 month recovery period with pain every day and little to no walking.

PS I'd be willing to bet this was worse than childbirth... If you haven't broken a bone this large and torn most of your leg muscles at the same time, you just cannot comprehend.

my god

 

[Dakota rube]

I was going to whine about my appendix, or slamming my finger in a car door, or in a garage door, or driving a nail through my own thumb.

But I got nothing on listi or onion.

 

[acidboy]

Onion wins obviously...

as for me:
I got into an accident while grilling, and burned most of my left leg when my shorts caught fire. was in denial at first, trying to brush off the burnt hair on my leg, but after a while the pain started coming in, and by the time I got to the e.r. I barely had enough energy to tell the person there I need to lie down before I passed out from the pain.

 

[mehhhh]

Yeah, appendix, as people have said. Mine was rupturing while they were putting me under. It hurt like a mother, but nothing like the intense 'my body is physically externally broken' pain that some of you guys are talking about.

 

[Deluks917]

I was elbowed in the adams apple and cracked the cartilage. Really hurt alot. Took a long time to heal up.

 

[nahneun]

I landed on my heel during a match when I was a beginner in kendo. The pain persisted for such a long time... every step I took

 

[Tck13]

This thread has already been won but...

I took a slapshot to the kidney while refereeing an Ice Hockey game. It took about 5 minutes until I stopped writhing in pain and could get up off of the ice and another 5 minutes until I could skate around again.

I had a bruised kidney after checking someone during an Ice Hockey game about 5 years ago but it didn't hurt as bad as the slapshot directly to my kidney. I actually just finished out that game and drove myself to the hospital after I got home and started pissing blood / blood clots and such...

The Staph infection that I picked up a couple of years ago from BJJ was surprisingly VERY painful even though it was only in my foot.

 

[Althis]

can't compare to previous entries, but i had a broken arm set twice without pain killers because my phobia of needles at the time was greater than the pain

another time i had a severe ear infection and was hit in the infected ear with a baseball, i felt something in my ear crunch and i almost blacked out from the pain

 

[LA Guy]

Onion wins, obviously.

I broke my leg in 2 places and had a hip cast in ninth grade. I fell down a hill running for the school bus. Yeah, real cool. And in freshman year of high school too. That was psychological torture. But the physical pain wasn't that bad, I suppose from the shock. Except that the shock and cold (it was January in Canada) made me come down with a fever too, so I was bedridden for close to a month.

I also had a MRSA staph infection in my neck (a hazard of gyms. Always shower with good soap after the gym, and especially after any full contact martial art.) Stupidly didn't treat it for a while. Constant and throbbing pain in my neck. Couldn't turn my head without acute pain. Pressure was crazy. When they drained it, the relief was instantaneous.

I've been punched and kicked plenty of times. It hurts, but you get over it quick. I think that chronic pain is generally much worse, extreme cases like onion's excepting, of course.

 

[Eason]

I had a muscle tear in my lower back in university, I basically couldn't move at all without excruciating pain, I couldn't even sleep.

The only other thing that really hurt was when I kicked my foot through a glass door, it cut deep from the middle of my calf down to my ankle. Because of the initial shock, I didn't feel anything at first. The pain came later as I sat down on my toilet, turned on the shower hose, washed out the wound and picked out the glass. Then I wrapped my leg in a towel and took a cab to the hospital. This was in China, so I thought I was going to get AIDS at the hospital or get an infection and need it amputated, so the psychological stress of the whole thing sucked maybe more than the physical.