Chronic cluster headache sufferer here. To sum up, I’ve been: Shot, stabbed, shot a second time, broke 7 bones in various appendages, hit with a baseball bat, hit by a car, multiple teeth issues, and migraine headaches, sprinkled for fun.
Basically, I took steve-o’s motto and ran with it (your body is a ride, ride it until the wheels fall off).
None of this comes close to the lightest cluster headache I’ve had. The sheer panic, the knowledge of what’s about to happen, the inescapable amount of pain I know is coming… Fuck CH.
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.
Fucking Crohn's Disease sucks. All of my "adventures" with it have been painful, but the one that takes the cake:
A couple of years ago, my GI wanted me to do a pill endoscopy test, which is where they basically have you swallow a pill that has a camera embedded in it, and it takes pictures while it traverses your insides. You're supposed to naturally "pass" it like anything else you eat, but in my case I did not, and it got stuck. My GI did not believe me, and it just kept getting worse and worse. To put a timeframe on things, this happened in early February of that year.
I had ER trip after ER trip throughout that year, they determined that it wasn't going to pass on its own and needed to be surgically removed, but since it was not "life threatening" they couldn't just wheel me into an OR immediately and have it done, it had to be scheduled. Took forever to find a surgeon to schedule me under. One of the times that I was in the hospital due to this, the doctor on my "care" team wanted me to do what she called a "supreme bowel cleanse" to see if that would dislodge it. I was hesitant to do it, but I was pretty much willing to do anything at that point to end this nightmare, and only because she promised me that if it didn't work, they'd take me into surgery and do it the old fashioned way. That ordeal was terrible, I've had Crohn's since before I was a teenager, I'm very used to doing colonoscopy prep - this was far worse than that, the pain was unbearable and the amount of bowel cleanse that they gave me must've been right at the border of their ethical limits (or at least, I imagine that has to be a thing, right?) and plot twist she did not hold up her end of the bargain when the pill still did not pass, instead she gave me a few days worth of pain meds and discharged me the next day.
My condition continued to get worse and worse, yet my operation wasn't scheduled till early July. The hospital that the surgeon worked for agreed to pre-admit me into their care 2 months in advanced because it got to the point where I could barely even hold down regular water and I had to be put on IV nutrition with a PICC line and all.
Fast forward to the operation day, they ended up having to do two surgeries in one go, the first being to remove the pill, and the second was to try to fix the damage that had been revealed on the camera. The moment I woke up from the operation I was screaming in pain, and begging them to put me back under (which they could not do). They kept giving me pain meds and I'd end up passing out eventually from the pain, wake back up, and the whole ordeal would start again. Eventually they put me on one of those self-administered pain med pumps where I could click a button every so often and it would give me some pain medication through my IV.
I didn't end up going home until the very beginning of September (first week I believe), and I had arrived there sometime in the middle of May. I will never do one of those pill endoscopy tests ever again. I also switched GIs since my current one at that time had refused to listen to me when I told her something was wrong at the beginning of the "experience".
The most intense physical pain I ever felt was waking up after impacted wisdom tooth removal. One side of my face was appr. 3x the size of the other.
The second worse was last week; waking up from anaesthesia after having all 22 remaining teeth removed. It's slightly better now and I'd put it at 8,5/10.
The worst pain I've ever felt was mental though. It started almost three decades ago when my father killed himself when I was a teen. To be honest, I never recovered. I'm a shell of a human being begging for release (death) daily while being too much of a coward to actually do it.
Oh, and after returning to work with 0 teeth, my coworkers now amuse themselves by making me say tongue breakers. I already knew they didn't like or respect me before all this, but this really drove a dagger into my heart because it was someone I never would have expected it from. I've been at this company for 10 years and in this team for 5 and I'm fighting a daily urge to follow in my father's footsteps.
He really had the right idea. I was pissed at him back then but I have more understanding and respect for his decision every single day.
Spinal Stenosis. Woke up one day feeling like my back was not only broken, but that I could feel the broken ends grinding against each other.
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.
Losing people I loved.
Kidney stones. I've had the tips of two fingers on my left hand chopped off, and even that didn't come close to the feeling of a kidney stone rattling down the pipework.
I have Medullary sponge kidney, which in short makes my kidneys a stone factory. It's a love/hate relationship at this point. On the plus side, I've found drinking at least 2 liters of lemonade every day has done wonders to stop my kidneys from feeling like they're trying to kill me all the time.
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.
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.
Getting hit by a truck while walking down the road, after the initial ragdoll physics were over. EVERYTHING hurt, from my hair follicles to my toes. Wouldn't wish it on anyone.
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.
I've had so many accidents with some that needed surgery and nothing beats getting my finger stuck in the car door of an Uber. I'm just glad the driver didn't move until after I freed my finger.
Getting my nail pulled off.
Also, not exactly painful, but tonic clonic seizure.
For me personally it was getting some of my arms skin getting shoved between two desks that I had my arm resting on after someone slammed them together tightly during high school
Left a red line that took a while to go away
Edit I just remembered something wven more painful then this
I'm going to copy paste my comment reply to someone else below
"You reminded me of the one time I was visiting my uncle as a child and I ended up puking in the car because the sun was hitting the back of my head in summer, and this was Australian summer where It can get hot and humid
I don't know if it was a migraine but it was painful as fuck"
There was also the time i got rope burn from tug o war in primary school but the car headache that was potentially a migraine was more painful
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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.
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migraines
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sun poisoning on shoulders
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colitis flare up
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broken arm
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sprained ankle
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My ankle had a tendency to swell up and hurt in my 20s, and I had no idea why. Just figured it had never really healed from a previous injury.
One day, it was worse than ever. I couldn't walk on it at all. I hopped (literally) into the ER, and they told me that the only way they would know is to draw fluid from the joint. Keep in mind, this particular joint is twice the size it should be and can't have any pressure put on it.
That was the kind of pain that's so bad your body doesn't even know how to react. I was sweating, cold, nauseous, and dizzy. It probably only took a few seconds, but it felt like it lasted 10 minutes.
Turns out I have chronic gout. Which can be determined with a blood test. 🤦🏻♂️
Dislocated shoulder. It went over the front of the socket which is apparently quite rare, and the most painful. I was blacking out front the pain, a friend fainted, ambulance gave me laughing gas which was great. Hospital visit was not fun, they tried various kinds of morphine which didn't seem to have much of an effect, then ended up giving me some sort of date rape 'cooperative sedation' meds and letting the student doctors take turns to fail at relocating my arm and fuck up the socket even more.
It's a throw up between dislocating my arm while kiting and wearing both wrist straps for the brake lines. So my arm dislocated in mid air, fell to the ground, kite inflates but doesn't take off and dragged me along the ground by my dislocated shoulder until I hit a rock.
Falling while climbing solo breaking my ankle and having to crawl out to find help.
And finally crashing while skiing and landing my hip on a rock, the ski patrol didn't know if I had a spinal injury and couldn't give me painkillers to get me off the hill, so they took me down a slushy bumpy spring slope on a sledge. Turns out I'd just fractured my hip so after the xray my friends dad the doctor got me loaded up with painkillers to make up for it.
Edit: that's just some of the worst I can think of, I am very grateful that the human mind cannot remember pain.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 was stung by a bullet ant (see username).
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.
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
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.
Migraines and kidney stones. Just no.
Getting cheated on.
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.
an infected pilonidal cyst
Cluster migraines.
Spinal tap. The pain went to 11. It was not fun.
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.
If we mean emotional pain, heartbreak.
If we mean physical pain, alcohol withdrawal.
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.
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.
Paper cut. Mic drop.
Had a random sinus pain that was so debilitating had to call my dad to take me to the er. Was around 13 to 16
phone call could barely understand me. Bridge of my nose to back of head felt like sharp daggers in waves.
By the time made it to er was gone had 0 pain and I never experienced it again. Dr's said it was sinus but I still don't have a fucking clue what that was
Cluster Headaches.
spine surgery
After I dislocated my kneecap, getting the ski boot pulled off.
Heartbreak, death of friends family, migraines
Well I had hives about a day or two after I had bottom surgery and had to switch to otc painkillers, so it’s either that or the cluster headaches I had as a kid.
Third place goes to the infection I had after a particularly invasive removal of wisdom teeth, also sans opiate.
Being allergic to both opiates and one of the most common antibiotics really fucking sucks.
Emotional pain it’s either my mom’s death to cancer or my ex father disowning me
Two weeks ago I stubbed my pinky toe so hard that I was sure it was broken, whilst talking my dog out in the middle of the night. It made my entire foot swell up for days. It's still sore today.
It's worse than when I broke my wrist as a teenager.
I had my fair share of health problems,from a major motor vehicle accident with a broken spine,burns,ruptured nerves, etc. to a stroke, a dislocated shoulder and knee, etc.
But the worst one? By far?
A fucking kidney stone. It literally redefined my 10/10 pain level.
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.Broken bones. Worst was the broken rib. Couldn't do shit. Just breathing hurt.
I had gallstones that turned into sepsis and they had to press on my abdomen to do imaging.
I've been lucky, just throwing my back into spasm.
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.
The very sudden and very quick pain I had in my back this morning. It was so bad I very nearly passed out.
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.
Humerus knitting while I'm trying to sleep sitting up without moving it.
Stretched my leg too much
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.
I fell from a playground equipment and a firm metal pole hit my shin
- Tooth ache
- Ear ache
- Calf cramp
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.
Are you me? Also I almost fainted at the first piss after the JJ removal.
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.
Gout flair up
Severe gastritis. It felt like I was run through by a spear. Fun times.
Realization, rejection, change, a swift kick to the nuts, growth.
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.
