What is the WORST pain you've ever had?

[AbsentmindedWoman]

Personally, toothache (constant background throb with searing white hot stabs that made me feel like I was being electrocuted in my skull every few seconds) gets the award for absolute worst ever. Two frozen shoulders, and adenomyosis that used to regularly have me puking and fainting and almost hallucinating on the bathroom floor are strong contenders - but miles behind. There is just something about vicious toothache that makes it the worst.

Contemplating this as just back from the dentist, where at least for now, things were ok this time

What about you?

Ruptured Fallopian tube due to ectopic pregnancy was my worst.

Cracked tooth comes a close second. The dentist tried to save the tooth with a root canal, but the tooth split even more in the few days waiting for a crown. I was ready pull the tooth out myself.

@lanbro

Gallstones, much worse than childbirth

100% agree

Oh and a flexible sigmoidoscopy which they airily tell you is painless - apart from the many people online who describe it as agony.

Why can't health professionals accept that everyone feels pain differently. If it's agony for me, it's not because I'm making it up. I hate making a fuss about pain - I snapped back my finger when it had a 90 degree dislocation, so I'm not a total wimp. I also almost never take painkillers for headaches, stomachaches etc.

But really the pain I had from gallstones, childbirth and the flexible sigmoidoscopy were indescribable. Why should we have to put up with it, when there are painkillers available?

1. herniated disc in neck
2. Childbirth

@sugarapplelane

Trigeminal neuralgia pain - awful

My darling mum has this when she was 82 and it was horrific….she died a few months later …not the cause of her death but was definitely the reason why she gave up !!

Severe peritonitis of the kidney that led to sepsis... never again do I want to feel that pain

Endometriosis. The most horrible, grinding, twisting pain that used to make me be sick.

Although when I had my first investigative operation it was keyhole surgery, and the phrenic nerve pain in my shoulder from my abdomen being inflated with CO2 was horrific. I was told it would be mild discomfort but I paced the room moaning for 12 hours with my husband, bless him, supporting me.

Kidney stone , its was tiny when it eventually came out too

Dislocated shoulder and broken humerus after a fall walking my dog…bloody awful!

Gallstones and childbirth. Different but both pretty terrible. I at least had gas and air with childbirth though. Around 40 gallbladder attacks later and finally had it removed last summer after suffering for 5 years.

I had really bad menstrual cramps as a teen.

I thought labor pain might be like that.

I was soooo wrong.

I can't remember the pain itself now, but I can remember being in pain.

Dry socket after wisdom tooth extraction was up there, too.

I was going to say this! 2 back to back births both unknown. First one was 54 hours (40 at home) ending in distressed baby, forceps and resuscitation (thankfully she’s fine). Second one was 36 hours home birth with just gas and air and the first we knew of back to back was when her head came out and the midwife said ‘oh, she’s the wrong way up!’ . All very ‘haha how funny!’ at the time but in hindsight, fuck me that was why it all hurt so much and I thought the contractions would make me pass out.
Close second would be appendicitis which I tried to ignore for a week.
I suspect I have a decent pain threshold….

Coccydynia. Worse than both my experiences of childbirth and lasted for over 18 months, 24/7 with no respite. It was horrific.

Mine was having the ventous inserted and applied to my babies head with zero analgesia, not even gas and air. It came unstuck and came flying out so they had to do it again. It felt like I was being tortured and torn in two from the genitals upwards. The attempts to deliver him with the ventous failed anyway so I had to be taken to theatres.

Chest drain after collapsed lung. Felt like I'd been hit by a bus.

Late miscarriage. Objectively it was less intense than childbirth, but my perception of the pain was coloured by fear and grief.

I didn't perceive childbirth to be particularly bad, even when I was doing it, because I was so focused on the outcome, on meeting my baby.

Knee replacement, sciatica and impacted wisdom teeth. Childbirth comes fourth after those as it doesn't last for that long.

A large blood clot blocked the main artery in my left arm, cutting off all blood supply to my lower arm.
My arm went white from elbow down & couldn't move my hand or fingers. I was on my own & it was absolutely bloody terrifying.
The pain though was out of this world, unremitting, 100x worse than anything I had ever known & I've given birth 4 times!
I howled like an animal all the way to the hospital.
Needed large doses of morphine, 10 days in hospital & had PTSD afterwards.

I have currently got sciatica, it's my fourth week. Can I ask fellow sufferers which painkillers helped as up to now, nothing seems to have made any impact. I had co codamol which did zilch for the pain and am now using Pregabalin and I don't feel any different after taking it. Unfortunately I can't take any aspirin or ibuprofen types of medication.
Got a sick note, I feel that I can walk but feel I could pass out from the pain when standing up for any length of time. It has different phases from electric shock which is the worst to constant dull toothache.
I'm not in as much pain as the first two weeks whereby I was trying to get some sleep sitting in a chair as lying down in bed was agony.

All these mentions of 'natural' childbirth can get in the bin. 'Childbirth with no pain relief', fair enough. Nothing 'natural' about screaming abject agony/danger/death when the (naturally evolved) human race has found ways to potentially make it less agonising/dangerous/lethal. The 'natural' label is bollocks. What you mean is not needing any intervention (or being unlucky enough to need it but not receive it, but ultimately being ok).

If my child's birth had been natural I'd have been naturally dead.

I have Rheumatoid Arthritis, flare pain is like having you bones split down the middle but, frozen shoulder ‘zingers’ and dry socket are in a different league. Given birth twice too and stil…

Broken ankle.

It's a 'toss up' between childbirth (back to back labour) and an impacted wisdom tooth with abscess in my jaw. Both indescribably painful 😖

Banging my Coccyx whilst sledging .Unreal !!