RE: whats the most severe excruciating pain that you have ever felt?

Childbirth

Reading threads with the first comment is "discuss."

Most intense but short lived - torn ACL - didn't know who, where, or what I was for a few short seconds

Most intense long lasting - kidney stone - couldn't answer questions at the ER and morphine didn't work.

Almost as intense and long lasting - bad gout flareups in big toe - required 800mg of ibuprophen and labored breathing (like having a baby) for a half hour or so until the drugs kicked in enough (still hurt like heck). Can feel every heartbeat in toe and the weight of a sheet or even the toe itself was excruciating. Brings tears to your eyes.

Definitely reading some of the responses on the LRC message boards... and a broken femur.

I broke both bones in my left forearm. It was all floppy like I had a second wrist. When I got to the ER the doctor had to shoot my arm full of morphine because trying to set it was a big deal. He never could set it because the break was clean and there was no way for the bones to support themselves.

He ended up putting me in a partial cast until I could get in for surgery. They put a plate and 8 screws into each bone. A year later they went back in and took them out.

I saw a kid who had the same break but didn't get the surgery. His arm was short and crooked because the bones healed wrong. So glad my parents had insurance. I think it cost around $10,000 for everything and the insurance company tried to weasel out of paying the claim.

Anyway, I have some awesome scars that I tell people I got in a knife fight.

Another time I bruised my tailbone skateboarding. That was pretty bad.

junior year of football playing wide receiver

going deep, beat the cornerback down the sideline but the QB threw the ball too far inside, safety was in perfect position (a 190 lb future D1 safety at that), my little 155 pound self went up for the ball and I got absolutely rocked at full speed.

wind knocked out, concussed, and when I came to I realized that the bone was sticking out of my mangled right arm

passed out from the pain, woke up in the hospital still in a good deal of pain

Got an orbital blowout fracture in my left eye by getting kicked in the face at a concert picking up my buddy who had fallen in a mosh pit. I was in excrutiating pain my buddy drove me home & then my mom didn't want to take me to the hospital because it was like 1 am. so she gave me advil but i had internal bleeding so i started puking up blood. I stayed up all night suffering when my dad finally took me to the hospital at 9 am where I had to wait for an hour...sucked

1. In high school, doc had to re-break middle finger on my left hand with rubber mallet after I didn't wear splint long enough.

Worse was when he was re-setting the bones.

2. Shingles on arm, chest. That lasts a while. Feels like a severe burn, but does not go away for 2-3 weeks. I had many grease burns as a cook, but this was deeper, and it travels nerve pathways.

3. Kidney & pancreas transplant. Woke up after that, and when they remove most of your internal organs, and then try to reassemble, the overall feeling is like you've been pummeled with a baseball bat. Every single thing hurts, even on a heavy morphine drip.

4. Was given solu-medrol. Found out I was allergic. All my skin peeled off in the course of the next 12 hours.

I was the color of an apple.

Think about the raw feeling beneath a blister and then multiply that by your entire body. Couldn't lie down. Couldn't stand. Couldn't sit. A sheet on the bed was so painful.

I won't comment completely on what it was like after going to the bathroom and trying to wipe. Good god, though, death was preferable.

Even zonked on oxy it was beyond miserable as a slight movement would spike the pain.

The piles of skin that came off my feet were very interesting, though. You don't realize what a lifetime of running does to build up thick layers of skin. Took about four months to be able to wear shoes and run without huge pain.

Although the pain only lasted 5 seconds, being tased is probably the most pain anyone can go through. When the 5 seconds is over though, the pain is gone. As far as lasting pain, I would say being sprayed with riot mace is pretty bad. It feels like your face has been put on a stove and lasts 1-2 hours.

Vomit-city from kidney stone pain: check. The ER nurse told me they'd had an ultimate fighter in with a stone the week before who was crying like a baby from the pain.

I was eight, out in the yard with a piece of 2x4 and an old ball peen hammer. Just a kid pounding nails into a hunk of wood (pointless, kid thing to do). On one upswing, I noticed the hammer was suddenly very light. Just as I brought the handle into view noticing the hammer head was missing, *THUNK* it hit me right at the base of the back of the neck (you know, on that top-most protruding vertebrae). Instant pain, but mostly I was embarrassed and didn't want my cranky old neighbor to see me cry, so beelined into the kitchen before the waterworks and shrieking began. (I still love that the trajectory was so perfect that the hammer head came down right on my neck.)

20, tore my ACL playing soccer, had surgery to repair it. As someone pointed out above, had a drain in the knee post-op, and during recovery the next day the doc doing rounds walks in, looks at the clip-board, says, "This needs to come out," and unceremoniously yanks it out. Parents and friends in the room at the time said I turned grey in seconds. I've never wanted to punch someone in the sack more than at that moment. Speaking of which, couldn't urinate post-op, so yyyyyyep, had to have a catheter inserted. Clue: when the nurse looks you directly in the eyes and says, "Okay, I want you to take some deeeep breaths and focus on your breathing," that's code for "You're f*cked." Oh and just for kicks, I caught strep throat while in the hospital and then my quadricep atrophied to nothing in the following week.

Friend of mine worked on a fence/decking crew one summer in college. One day while running a pneumatic nailer, he put a deck nail through his thumbnail. Just about passed out pulling it out out of his thumb. Boss told him to go sit down in the truck for awhile. So wobbly/groggy, when he got in the truck he accidentally slammed his hand and thumb in the truck door while closing it. Came to awhile later.

More great stories of agony, here:

http://www.forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?post=3477331

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Having stitches removed from pinky finger after tendon repair surgery. Turned gray and passed out. Oh, and a teeter totter shot to the nuts when I was 10 (I didn't stand far enough back before letting go).

John

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I had a grand mal seizure(Epileptic) on the way to work and the convulsions were so strong both my shoulders were dislocated and my rotator cuffs torn.

As the doctor described it, it was like stepping on a downed power line. To think that the electricity from your brain could do actually tear your arms right out of the sockets...

I obviously don't remember the seizure, but my god... the pain after. Excruciating. Seemingly never ending. On the fourth attempt to get my left shoulder in place, I puked and passed out.

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I broke every bone in my face between my eyebrows and jaw last year when I was hit by a minivan while on a training ride. I'll have the full story in my blog in the next few weeks when I can get some of the grisly pictures from my plastic surgeon. Long story short I have a crap load of metal plates in my face, had my jaw wired shut for a few weeks and now 7 surgeries later I'm looking not too shabby.

The actual accident didnt hurt due to shock and adrenaline, but after my surgery in November I wanted them to shoot me. They cut my skull open from the back to the front to take bone for a graft to rebuild my eye socket. I was clicking the morphine drip like I was playing a video game!

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Broke my nose in a motorcycle crash and when they set it in the days after they shoved little wooden spikes soaked in cocaine into the sinus cavity to deaden it. It was so bad sounding that my dad watching about passed out and he has seen some things in war that I can't fathom. Still not as bad a the other two becasue it only lasted a couple of minutes.

And:

http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?post=4280482

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ha! @#%^ wrote:

Try >24 hours of labor, childbirth x 2 with no pain meds. Oh yeah, and then breastfeeding twins with extreme sleep deprivation for a little over a year.

Men don't have the faintest understanding of pain or self-sacrifice.

Not diminishing your experience, but 'men don't have the faintest understanding of pain or self-sacrifice'... really? That's one of the stupidist things I've ever heard on here. We had a holiday on Monday that honored the fact that [mostly] men have gone through extreme pain and death to preserve our country. That's the definition of self-sacrifice. I dare say death - by disease, being riddled with bullets, body blown to pieces, burned by a flame thrower, drowning while trapped on a sinking ship, ETC. - is worse than 24 hours of labor and a year of breast-feeding.

Why is it that women are so offended when men dare to say they've experienced a pain worse than childbirth. You take so much pride in it? I don't think I've ever experienced anything close to as bad as childbirth, but I know there are worse things.

Yeah, I agree that was a ridiculous thing for someone to say. Sounds like a troll to me!

Mine: when I was in high school there was a gale and a heavy metal door blew open, I put my hand out to try to stop it hitting me and a metal spike it in went down the back of my fingernail on my middle finger.

Tooth abscess. Had to bite down on a towel hard to control the pain. Needed to go to e.r. Shot of Demerol didn't help. As soon as I got antibiotics pain went away.

Bruised illiac artery. Had me doubled over in pain for hours and taking a dump was just about impossible.

Doctor had to lance-drain an abscessed tonsil (swollen the size of a ping pong ball and blocking my throat) with a needle/syringe. No anesthesia/local. It was took about a minute or two. Searing pain. I screamed, fainted, puked. And fainted again.

Running several miles of a marathon with a stress fracture on the femur. It started hurting at about 9 miles, was numbing by 13 or 14, and at 16 something inside my knee went squish. Kept running for 2 more miles and could not take another step.

Circumcision without anesthesia, true story, just know it is painful, and I broke my jaw and was away from medical care for 12 hrs. Top that minions, top that

Shrapnel in the leg at the Boston Marathon 2013. Didnt know what hit me.

Child birth with no drugs can be very painful....but not always. I had all 4 kids with no medication, last two at home. Two of the labors were VERY painful, one just painful, and the last one was painless. Yes, it can happen. I caught the baby myself on the bathroom floor because I had no idea I was that far along in the labor process! I have to say that some other things I have been through were also very, very painful: infected tooth, and sciatic nerve pain. Both made me cry.

cycling. descending at 45mph and hitting a pothole.

broken collarbone and 2 ribs. roadrash for days.

sitting there after for a minute not know wtf just happened.