To ask what's the worst (physical) pain you've ever experienced?

[canwetalkaboutcake]

I've never broken a bone or given birth, but I have had some very painful periods that have made me feel like I'm going to pass out. Also terrible travel sickness / vomiting on a 20 hour trip that left me wishing for death due to how crap I felt.

Concussion
Dislocated arm
Sinus infection
Birth
Sciatica

In that order, I think my pain threshold is high. As an aside when I dislocated my arm which I had done before my Mother couldn’t be bothered to take me to the hospital, we lived quite rurally so she put it back in with zero anaesthetic or training.

Emergency forceps delivery with no pain relief. Tied with an operation when I had part of my knee joint rebuilt and had a bad reaction to the anaesthetic on top. 😫

A very difficult lumbar puncture. So so painful. My partner held my hand to comfort me. I didn't give a toss that he was there. I was just consumed with the pain.

I suffered with Endometriosis for 10 yrs. I had to have 4 ops to correct .It was very hard to conceive, but we eventually had a healthy baby boy. 😃

Fuchs' dystrophy (cornea) and gallstones. Closely followed by sciatica.

Dental abscess.

A horrendous ear infection whilst pregnant. I couldn't move my head at all the pain was excruciating.

Oh, and quinsy. That was pretty horrible too and dragged on for ages. The relief when the IV drugs started working was like heaven!

Have had a c section, a badly infected ingrown toenail, and suffered three fractures plus head injury due to a driver crashing into me when cycling.

The most painful by far was the infected toenail. Like my toe was on fire! Infection wasn't responding to antibiotics for a few days. Took more than two weeks to be able to walk normally.

Second most painful was the physio exercises to regain mobility in my fractured collarbone/shoulder blade. More painful than the fractures themselves which I managed with paracetamol as codeine made me vomit.

C section wasn't particularly painful. Had IV pain killers in hospital then paracetamol was fine but not needed after a day or two at home.

I snapped mine, and yes I agree it was awful! Worse than unmedicated birth of a 9 pounder, worse than migraines. And the pain hung around for weeks if not months.

The only thing that topped it and actually made me go temporarily blind from pain was slamming my fingertip in a door.

A twisted and necrotic ovary caused by a dermoid the size of a grapefruit, with full blown abdo infection, that my idiot GP insisted was IBS.

A 3am trip to A&E, a five hour emergency op later, and minus the dermoid, an ovary and a fallopian tube, I felt better. The relief was blissful. 🙂

I changed GP.

Recovery from brain surgery.

Four partially erupted wisdom teeth removed under general anaesthetic - they broke one of the adjacent teeth. I got an infection and lost 2 stones in the next 6 weeks, until I got trismus and couldn’t eat or drink at all. I was too ill to care that I was going to die, without drinking!

A broken ankle - I was in so much pain I couldn’t function. I couldn’t think, read, eat, drink, wash myself or go to the toilet by myself. They only gave me codeine, which was absolutely useless. I drank as little as possible so I wouldn’t have to go to the toilet much! A natural twin labour was not in the same league!

A steroid injection into my hand.

My second miscarriage, when a junior doctor in A & E was pulling out what looked like massive clumps of blackcurrant jelly (blood presumably) from my cervix, where it must have been stuck. Enough to fill a lunchbox. My husband, who was watching, couldn’t face a blood test for years afterwards. Then after that, an ERPC, after which I was rolling around in agony, probably because I got Asherman’s syndrome from the first one, when I was also rolling around in agony afterwards!

Oesophageal spasms - at the time, it feels like a heart attack and I’m dying, although it’s not. Severe central chest pain, sweating and dizziness. It’s usually brought on by stress! Luckily a drink of cold water stops it immediately, if I can get one!

I was lying on my catheter with nowhere for my urine to go after my first c section. I didn't know and no one checked for an hour. The pain was so bad I thought I was dying.

Local anaesthetic injection into the arch of my foot. I would take childbirth over that ANY DAY.

Appendicitis.

Impacted wisdom tooth.

Induction child birth with intense back to back contractions, literally went wild with pain and scared the life out of my dh. Thankfully second child was natural birth and a breeze in comparison.

Also sudden onset migraine, I thought I was dying.

Childbirth got a bit gnarly, nearly died and spent 8 days in a HDU. But that was a piece of piss compared to getting stung by a cobbler fish while swimming in Western Australia. It barely left a mark but oh my god the pain was unreal! I didn't even know what had happened and was screaming in pain while getting triaged at A & E, when the pain started subsiding. One of the docs was a fisherman and he knew exactly what it was, as he knew the pain only lasts around an hour. I would genuinely rather have a baby than do that again.

I broke my ankle in July and the pain was unbearable. Only just allowed to gently weight bear on it again.

Sciatica when it attacks is horrible.

I had my 2nd baby on my living room floor as labour came on too quick.

I think I'd rather go through the childbirth again than break another bone.

Can't decide between a broken & fractured elbow or a tonsil quinsy - and I've given birth twice naturally

Gallbladder. 18 times while also pregnant.

Severe eye infection, shards of my eye were comping out in my hand
Years of endometriosis, worse than childbirth for me.
Miscarriage
c section recovery

1. "natural" childbirth - no pain relief
2. childbirth - ventouse
3. nerve endings exposed after upper molar shattered on extraction
4. broken wrists
5. tendonitis
6. migraine (Covid)

3 and 4 were up there with childbirth as the pain was chronic until the broken tooth was surgically removed/the casts were set

Another vote for gallstones

Internal exam for dilation during childbirth (when your cervix decides to hide and a doc need to have a good rummage)