Ask Lemmy

6 vertebrae, 4 ribs, base of my skull, scapula—fractured; it is a pain that has never faded and never fundamentally changed in 10.5 years. I can't escape it for even a minute. It is like a sword in my back, my spine feels like a twisted and knotted towel, and my mind like a voice shouting over the pain. Thanks for asking.

Getting cheated on.

Inflamed sacroilliac joints causing stabbing pains in my legs while on a city break where we were walking everywhere. Thought it was sciatica at the time but multiple MRIs later was confirmed to be something similar but different..

Never broken a bone so don't have much to share in terms of the painful experiences.

Got kicked in the balls when I was younger. It's not pain, it's something else. Of a different nature. You're transported outside of everything, outside of reality. It was transcendental.

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.

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

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.

Small stuff compared to some others on here, but noteable for being 100% self-inflicted and fairly warned. Not me, I watched someone stick almost a quarter cup of wasabi in his mouth. It was the first time he'd seen it, was warned by multiple people, and did it anyways. His eyes rolled back into his head. He vomited. He passed out briefly. Someone had to drive him home because he was basically acting like he was intoxicated.

He said later he figured it would taste like pistachio ice cream.

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.

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

I had some sort of bad migraine episode where I couldn't stop puking. Every time I threw up, the force of doing so would cause a wave of pain that was like someone hit me in the head with a baseball bat.

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'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.

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

Migraines and kidney stones. Just no.

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...

Three herniated discs in my back causing sciatic pain. It wasn't that the pain was bad on a moment-to-moment basis, but that it just want on and on and on. It was agony to sit down, so I had to stand in my cubicle to work. It was painful to lie down, so I ended up getting about 4 hours of sleep each night. I was taking several grams of ibuprofen, acetaminophen (yes, I'm lucky I didn't destroy my liver), and naproxen sodium daily, just to be functional. This went on for over a year.

The fun part is that when I first starting having sciatic pain, I was pretty sure that it was my back, because I hadn't done anything that would have injured my leg. I had really good insurance at the time, but my doctor refused to order an MRI or even an x-ray; he thought I was trying to get a prescription for drugs. It took about 15 months of pain, and multiple visits to my doctor, an ER, and even attempting to see a chiropractor (who was at least self-aware enough to realize that he shouldn't touch me without an MRI first), before a scheduling error got another doctor in the practice to look at me, order an x-ray, and then order an MRI on the basis of the x-ray. Within about two days of the MRI being read I had received a referral to a neurosurgeon, in less than a week he was asking me whether I wanted a laminectomy or a spinal fusion. (These days I'd be opting for disc replacement), and I was recovering from surgery about a month after that MRI.

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.

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.

My father

I had (and still have) a sore spot under my right shoulder blade, I think it's called rhomboid pain, which I visited a physical therapist for. He found the exact spot and massaged it with his knuckle and that was by far the most painful experience of my life. On the scale from 1 to 10, that was 8.5. At 9 I would start screaming and 10 would make me pass out.

What ever has been the second most painful experience doesn't even register compared to that.

Cluster migraines.

If we mean emotional pain, heartbreak.

If we mean physical pain, alcohol withdrawal.

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

Double middle ear infection, couldn't let my head tilt to either side for three days, or absurd pain ensued for an hour.

How did I sleep then? Exactly.