The most painful physical ailment you've experienced?
- Thread starter Mr Silver
- Start date
Yeah, I just had the standard in-office "surgery" to get mine removed. But before I had it fixed it was hard to walk well and when I stubbed by toe.... Yikes!
You may not have a choice. For our first child, my wife opted not to take any drugs. For the second, she wanted to have the epidural, but the labor came on so fast that she was past the point when she could get that or any other painkillers. However, for the third child, she was very happy and mellow.
I had my tonsils out a year ago tomorrow. I would not wish that fresh hell on my worst enemy. I knew I was in trouble when the prescription for vicodin came in a 750ml bottle. If that bottle could have kissed back, I might have made it my 2nd wife.
If that bottle could have kissed back, I might have made it my 2nd wife.
doubleohfive
Fleet Admiral
My dental health had deteriorated significantly over the past decade, to the point that I knew at least one tooth (lower left side, all the way in the back) would need to be removed. In June 2010, I had wrapped out from my job with ABC Studios (I was an assistant to the writers on a show called Legend of the Seeker) and was now unemployed. Unfortunately, this also left me without any viable health insurance as my policy with ABC expired at the end of the month. I was having dinner with some friends watching a movie at their place and realized the last upper right side tooth was somewhat sensitive as well, and it progressively got worse. To the point that if I wasn't careful, chewing on that side of my mouth would set off a spasm of excruciating pain unlike any I'd ever experienced. I began to notice that I was spitting a lot more and more worrisome that I was spitting small amounts of blood whenever I spat. (In retrospect, I've come to inwardly refer to this time in my life as "the Year of Blood and Spit.")
I began chewing exclusively on my left side after that.
Despite this, I was still prone to throbbing bouts of agony, even if I wasn't eating. Cold foods were strictly out of the picture, as were cold drinks, though I could sometimes manage those as long as I swallowed a certain way to avoid contact with my teeth.
A few months later, sometime in October 2010, I was eating popcorn at home while watching a movie in my room. It was late on a Saturday night, and I panicked when I realized I'd finally done it. The lower back tooth on my left side finally gave way and crunched right off, a good quarter of it ripped from the tooth itself. I freaked out, panicking that the spasms of dental pain would increase with this now exposed inner part of my tooth readily accessible.
Except, it didn't. I somehow managed to get by on soft foods for a while (soup, applesauce, bananas, yogurt, etc.) but the upper tooth was still a ticking time bomb and I knew the lower tooth would only last so long.
A resulting side effect from all of this was that the upper tooth seemed to be connected directly to a nerve running up my jaw to my head and down my neck to my shoulder, so when I would aggravate that tooth, my entire right side would seize up and ache endlessly, and I'd plow my way through another hours-long headache. I was regularly popping three or four ibuprofen to combat the pain, and began carrying ibuprofen, tubes of Sensodyne toothpaste, Orajel and Anbesol around with me everywhere I went in fear of another "attack."
In December 2010, I landed a job that returned me to ABC Studios and was able to get back on an insurance plan with them, but because I was technically a "new" hire (despite having worked for the company the year before on another show) I had to wait a certain period of time before my dental insurance benefits would kick in. In the meantime, I started getting pain while I was sleeping, which made things all the more fun. (Those of you around at the time might remember I was not the nicest person to interact with around here last fall.)
Wouldn't you know, in the following months the lower left tooth began to give way. Work was starting to get marginally better, but still had me coming home every night hating myself and questioning why I wasn't succeeding at it, a new experience for me as I'd been pretty damn good at every job I'd gotten since moving to California. At one point I excused myself from a staff meeting, only to wind up nearly passed out on the restroom floor from the pain. On top of what turned out to be a miserable job and a stressful, disappointing and hurtful breakup just prior to this, I was now fighting a dental war on two fronts. I was dog-sitting for a friend one night and bit down in the wrong way on a burrito and experienced the worst toothache spasm and explosion of pain I'd felt yet. Convulsing on the floor in the back of my friend's house while the dogs sat there watching me, my eyes burning with tears and my head violently trying to process the pain, I found myself vomiting. By the end of May I was literally unable to eat any kind of solid food.
At the urging of my friends, and with my dental insurance finally active and available to me, I finally made an appointment with a dentist and got checked out. I would need two root canals, two crowns, and two fillings when all was said and done. Upon scheduling the operations, I spoke with my boss who had just gone through a root canal of his own (a procedure which I'd heard could be quite painful and which I'd never had before). Upon researching what goes on in a root canal and after talking to my boss, I realized I would be ok. My fear of excessive jaw, gum and tooth pain began to subside and I went in for the operation on the upper right tooth.
Apart from the brutal sound of the drills and scraping, and the smell of burning tooth matter as my orthodontist chiseled away at the infected tooth tissue, the procedure was relatively painless, quick, and with the antibiotics and vicodin, I was able to get through the next few days ok.
Until the following Monday, when I could barely sit upright without the other tooth acting up. I went to work and tried to get through the day but the throbbing just would not stop. I had resisted taking any of the vicodin as my dentist had prescribed it as a fallback and as I'd taken it only once before - in 2003 when I'd had my wisdom teeth removed. Back then I realized I'd never be able to become a drug addict because withdrawal from painkillers is one awful bitch to get through. I called my dentist and he graciously agreed to fit me in for an emergency second root canal (which we had previously scheduled for two weeks later.)
I returned two weeks later to have the disinfectant removed and the temporary crowns placed. I laid low for a bit, living on yogurt and applesauce for most of the week, and was pleasantly treated when the following Friday, at a celebration and screening for the 30th anniversary of Raiders of the Lost Ark, I was finally able to eat again and made several unabashed trips to the buffet table to do so. As I said to my roommate at the time, "The hardest part is remembering I can chew on both sides again!"
Unfortunately, my insurance coverage deductible was pretty much spent on these two operations, so I have to wait till January 1 to finish the rest of the work - the fillings and the permanent crowns. I still have nightmares though of those awful spasms waking me up in the middle of the night or during working hours and regret not addressing them sooner.
I also look at this entire situation and realize that a lot of it -- not all of it, admittedly, but a lot of it -- could have been easily avoided had there been a quality health insurance policy in place for me regardless of my employment situation. Had financial considerations not been foremost on my mind re: how much these kinds of operations would cost, I probably would have gotten the surgeries taken care of sooner. When I say to people "You can't quantify pain," its because I spent a year in absolute agony because of these teeth. Had I been covered with a decent plan, I would have been able to, most likely, resolved the issues once they started instead of agonizing every time I opened my mouth.
Nobody should have to go through what I did. I wouldn't wish that pain on anyone.
Trust me, you wouldn't either.
I began chewing exclusively on my left side after that.
Despite this, I was still prone to throbbing bouts of agony, even if I wasn't eating. Cold foods were strictly out of the picture, as were cold drinks, though I could sometimes manage those as long as I swallowed a certain way to avoid contact with my teeth.
A few months later, sometime in October 2010, I was eating popcorn at home while watching a movie in my room. It was late on a Saturday night, and I panicked when I realized I'd finally done it. The lower back tooth on my left side finally gave way and crunched right off, a good quarter of it ripped from the tooth itself. I freaked out, panicking that the spasms of dental pain would increase with this now exposed inner part of my tooth readily accessible.
Except, it didn't. I somehow managed to get by on soft foods for a while (soup, applesauce, bananas, yogurt, etc.) but the upper tooth was still a ticking time bomb and I knew the lower tooth would only last so long.
A resulting side effect from all of this was that the upper tooth seemed to be connected directly to a nerve running up my jaw to my head and down my neck to my shoulder, so when I would aggravate that tooth, my entire right side would seize up and ache endlessly, and I'd plow my way through another hours-long headache. I was regularly popping three or four ibuprofen to combat the pain, and began carrying ibuprofen, tubes of Sensodyne toothpaste, Orajel and Anbesol around with me everywhere I went in fear of another "attack."
In December 2010, I landed a job that returned me to ABC Studios and was able to get back on an insurance plan with them, but because I was technically a "new" hire (despite having worked for the company the year before on another show) I had to wait a certain period of time before my dental insurance benefits would kick in. In the meantime, I started getting pain while I was sleeping, which made things all the more fun. (Those of you around at the time might remember I was not the nicest person to interact with around here last fall.)
Wouldn't you know, in the following months the lower left tooth began to give way. Work was starting to get marginally better, but still had me coming home every night hating myself and questioning why I wasn't succeeding at it, a new experience for me as I'd been pretty damn good at every job I'd gotten since moving to California. At one point I excused myself from a staff meeting, only to wind up nearly passed out on the restroom floor from the pain. On top of what turned out to be a miserable job and a stressful, disappointing and hurtful breakup just prior to this, I was now fighting a dental war on two fronts. I was dog-sitting for a friend one night and bit down in the wrong way on a burrito and experienced the worst toothache spasm and explosion of pain I'd felt yet. Convulsing on the floor in the back of my friend's house while the dogs sat there watching me, my eyes burning with tears and my head violently trying to process the pain, I found myself vomiting. By the end of May I was literally unable to eat any kind of solid food.
At the urging of my friends, and with my dental insurance finally active and available to me, I finally made an appointment with a dentist and got checked out. I would need two root canals, two crowns, and two fillings when all was said and done. Upon scheduling the operations, I spoke with my boss who had just gone through a root canal of his own (a procedure which I'd heard could be quite painful and which I'd never had before). Upon researching what goes on in a root canal and after talking to my boss, I realized I would be ok. My fear of excessive jaw, gum and tooth pain began to subside and I went in for the operation on the upper right tooth.
Apart from the brutal sound of the drills and scraping, and the smell of burning tooth matter as my orthodontist chiseled away at the infected tooth tissue, the procedure was relatively painless, quick, and with the antibiotics and vicodin, I was able to get through the next few days ok.
Until the following Monday, when I could barely sit upright without the other tooth acting up. I went to work and tried to get through the day but the throbbing just would not stop. I had resisted taking any of the vicodin as my dentist had prescribed it as a fallback and as I'd taken it only once before - in 2003 when I'd had my wisdom teeth removed. Back then I realized I'd never be able to become a drug addict because withdrawal from painkillers is one awful bitch to get through. I called my dentist and he graciously agreed to fit me in for an emergency second root canal (which we had previously scheduled for two weeks later.)
I returned two weeks later to have the disinfectant removed and the temporary crowns placed. I laid low for a bit, living on yogurt and applesauce for most of the week, and was pleasantly treated when the following Friday, at a celebration and screening for the 30th anniversary of Raiders of the Lost Ark, I was finally able to eat again and made several unabashed trips to the buffet table to do so. As I said to my roommate at the time, "The hardest part is remembering I can chew on both sides again!"
Unfortunately, my insurance coverage deductible was pretty much spent on these two operations, so I have to wait till January 1 to finish the rest of the work - the fillings and the permanent crowns. I still have nightmares though of those awful spasms waking me up in the middle of the night or during working hours and regret not addressing them sooner.
I also look at this entire situation and realize that a lot of it -- not all of it, admittedly, but a lot of it -- could have been easily avoided had there been a quality health insurance policy in place for me regardless of my employment situation. Had financial considerations not been foremost on my mind re: how much these kinds of operations would cost, I probably would have gotten the surgeries taken care of sooner. When I say to people "You can't quantify pain," its because I spent a year in absolute agony because of these teeth. Had I been covered with a decent plan, I would have been able to, most likely, resolved the issues once they started instead of agonizing every time I opened my mouth.
Nobody should have to go through what I did. I wouldn't wish that pain on anyone.
Trust me, you wouldn't either.
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Another serial kidney stone victim here, although they stopped when I got out of my 30s. The first one hit me out of the blue and I called an ambulance-- I figured anything that painful must be fatal. 
They never passed on their own. The first one went via roto rooter and the rest by lithotripsies-- the lithotripsies, at least, are quite benign.
My mother also had a kidney stone and according to her it hurt worse than childbirth. And if my mother says anything hurt worse than giving birth to me, you better believe it.
They never passed on their own. The first one went via roto rooter and the rest by lithotripsies-- the lithotripsies, at least, are quite benign. My mother also had a kidney stone and according to her it hurt worse than childbirth. And if my mother says anything hurt worse than giving birth to me, you better believe it.
tl;dr
Nah only kidding!
In fact I read your entire post and really sympathise because whilst I've had some dental issues, mine don't even come close to your experiences!
The waiting around for treatment can be a major source of frustration. We are fortunate to have the NHS, but even with that service, dental treatment still costs money. In some cases it's cheaper to take a holiday abroad and get the work done there privately than it is to pay an NHS dentist!
The waiting list just to join a surgery can take months (or even years) depending on the area and that goes for private practises as well. I'm not entirely sure what a person's options are for insurance over here, but in a few public service jobs such as the military you recieve free dental health care.
Count yourselves lucky. I'm one of the unhappy few that have chronic kidney stones, typically 2 or 3 a year for the last 15 years. Many pass without much incident, but a lot of them put me in agonizing pain so bad that even the Hydrocodone prescription I have does nothing, and even the ER drugs aren't much help. You'd think that something in my diet or lifestyle would affect this, but no, there's really *nothing* I can do about it.
Yeap, Kidney stone, and i cant believe the pain, it was so intense that it also had me curled up in utter agony as well....knocked me right off my feet, and i was also nearly crying, and i never cry....... managed to get myself to the hospital were they gave me a examination and then some really strong painkillers which really helped while i waited for it to pass..........and that part was another whole other level of pain.
BTW, I've known one woman who had both given birth (without painkillers) and passed a kidney stone. She said the stone was worse.
I had some hydrcodones, but what really did it for me was Toradol Instant pain relief. Amazing stuff.
I had a kidney stone about 7 years ago. It was stuck in my ureter for 3 days.
Serious pain and the only thing that even dulled it was 3 shots of some kind of narcotic in the ER (I didn't know it was a kidney stone at first).
Then last year, I had some sort of weird withdrawal when I suddenly stopped taking Prednisone after 6 months.
The pain in my left lower lung was even more excruciating than the kidney stone and the shots they gave me in the ER barely did anything.
I thought it was a cracked rib, even though I had no idea how I could've done it. Still not sure exactly what to call it, other than unbearable.
I was surprised I never passed out since I couldn't take even a small breath most of those couple days.
Serious pain and the only thing that even dulled it was 3 shots of some kind of narcotic in the ER (I didn't know it was a kidney stone at first).
Then last year, I had some sort of weird withdrawal when I suddenly stopped taking Prednisone after 6 months.
The pain in my left lower lung was even more excruciating than the kidney stone and the shots they gave me in the ER barely did anything.
I thought it was a cracked rib, even though I had no idea how I could've done it. Still not sure exactly what to call it, other than unbearable.
I was surprised I never passed out since I couldn't take even a small breath most of those couple days.
A recurring running injury- a misaligned cuboid bone in my left foot. When I would go running, the first time it would happen, my foot would just get a little sore. However, if I went running after the cuboid was already irritated, that's when I would get into serious trouble. A slow 2-3 mile run would put me in so much pain that I wouldn't be able to put any weight on that foot for a full week. It reached a point where if I went for a run and my left foot started getting sore, I wouldn't run again for a couple weeks in an effort to avoid making it a bigger issue. There was one time where it flared up part way through a 13 mile run and I ended up having to skip classes all week because I absolutely just could not get around. Finally figured out what's going on but it still crops up once in a while, which makes it hard to gain any momentum running sometimes.
The surgery I had in March to remove a malignant tumor and the part of the spine that it had destroyed. The pain afterwards was excruciating, totally mind-boggling. To put it in perspective, I know from a previous surgery and a broken foot that I have a very high tolerance for pain.
I've had just enough nerve damage to have a small idea of what it must be like for you.
My sympathy.
I've had just enough nerve damage to have a small idea of what it must be like for you.
My sympathy.
Worst for me was an anal abcess. I actually had 2 of them, about 6 months apart. The first one was the worst though. Basically there was a constant burning sensation in my rear, and sitting down was almost impossible because of the pain involved with anything touching me there, no matter how many pillows I used. When I could sit it usually took me a couple minutes to get in a comfortable position. The first time, I didn't know what it was so I waited a few days before going to the doctor, who declared it the worst one he had ever seen.
Fortunately the surgery was short, nearly painless, and able to be performed in the doctor's office and not a hospital. And the relief was nearly immediate.
Some of the other things posted here are worse, I'm sure, but it's not an experience I'm eager to repeat again. Fortunately it's been about 2 1/2 years since the last one.
Fortunately the surgery was short, nearly painless, and able to be performed in the doctor's office and not a hospital. And the relief was nearly immediate.
Some of the other things posted here are worse, I'm sure, but it's not an experience I'm eager to repeat again. Fortunately it's been about 2 1/2 years since the last one.
A salivary gland duct infection, right in the middle of the roof of my mouth. Apparently it can be caused by something as simple as a tony morsel of food getting stuck in it. An absess slowly started to grow, but being the teenager I was, I tried to ignore it. It wasn't painful at first, but then any time my tongue or some food accidentally brushed it there would be intense spasms of pain.
Still, I didn't say anything. But when I came down with a high fever I told my mom about the absess and she grew concerned about a possible infection. We rushed to the doctor, who sent us to an ear, nose, and throat specialist, and that afternoon was one of my worst memories.
It was about 6 PM so the office was already closed, but this young, fresh-faced doctor was still in and agreed to take me for emergency removal of the absess. It was just the doctor, me, my mom, and a receptionist there. He examined me and then told me it would have to be removed by slicing through it. To dull the pain he was going to give me novacaine, but he had to shoot it directly into the roof of my mouth.
Yeah...that didn't work. Shove a needle into the roof of your mouth and see how it feels. It was so painful that he had to stop the injection and go forward with the slicing without meds. At this point I was already sobbing and still in my hazy fevered state. I don't know how the hell I was able to sit still while he slowly (it felt like YEARS) sliced through the roof of my mouth.
He tried to contain the seepage with various things, but all I remember is the intense, INTENSE pain followed by the taste of pus and blood in my mouth. I immediately started puking. The doctor was so distraught that I saw his eyes tearing up and he had to step out of the room. I was sent home with some antibiotics and Vicodin...which I soon learned that I have a bad reaction to and continued vomiting for the next day until I got something else.
What an awful, awful experience. The healing process sucked as well, since having an injury on the roof of your mouth is about the worst place possible. I mean, it hurt to breathe. Impossible to eat. I just had to wait for it to heal, and it wasn't until much later that the scar eventually healed.
Oh yeah, and the doctor said that there was a 70% chance it would return. Thank god it didn't. I still worry about it a decade later though...any time I feel a slight bump in my mouth I start to panic.
Still, I didn't say anything. But when I came down with a high fever I told my mom about the absess and she grew concerned about a possible infection. We rushed to the doctor, who sent us to an ear, nose, and throat specialist, and that afternoon was one of my worst memories.
It was about 6 PM so the office was already closed, but this young, fresh-faced doctor was still in and agreed to take me for emergency removal of the absess. It was just the doctor, me, my mom, and a receptionist there. He examined me and then told me it would have to be removed by slicing through it. To dull the pain he was going to give me novacaine, but he had to shoot it directly into the roof of my mouth.
Yeah...that didn't work. Shove a needle into the roof of your mouth and see how it feels. It was so painful that he had to stop the injection and go forward with the slicing without meds. At this point I was already sobbing and still in my hazy fevered state. I don't know how the hell I was able to sit still while he slowly (it felt like YEARS) sliced through the roof of my mouth.
He tried to contain the seepage with various things, but all I remember is the intense, INTENSE pain followed by the taste of pus and blood in my mouth. I immediately started puking. The doctor was so distraught that I saw his eyes tearing up and he had to step out of the room. I was sent home with some antibiotics and Vicodin...which I soon learned that I have a bad reaction to and continued vomiting for the next day until I got something else.
What an awful, awful experience. The healing process sucked as well, since having an injury on the roof of your mouth is about the worst place possible. I mean, it hurt to breathe. Impossible to eat. I just had to wait for it to heal, and it wasn't until much later that the scar eventually healed.
Oh yeah, and the doctor said that there was a 70% chance it would return. Thank god it didn't. I still worry about it a decade later though...any time I feel a slight bump in my mouth I start to panic.
I tore ligaments in my ankle falling down the stairs at school when I was 9. That was pretty bad, but it may have been due to the fact that I'd never before experienced that level of pain for such a long time (my mother took me home and made me wait for my father to get home, two hours later, before going to the hospital).
In the last six months alone, I've had shingles and a broken big toe (a bowling injury, believe it or not - my shoe stuck on the lane, and the rest of my body kept going). The shingles were nowhere near as bad as I expected from what others had told me, though - at worst, it felt like I was being jabbed with a needle from the inside for a second or two. The toe was worse, especially since I don't drive and I walk a fair bit. (I only have a two-block walk at either end of my commute, but even two blocks is not fun with a broken big toe.) Actually, the doctors' theory was that breaking my toe caused my body to lower its defenses, which allowed the chicken pox virus to reactivate.
But the worst may have been two or so years ago. I was on Skype with my then-boyfriend, and suddenly a headache came from out of nowhere that was so bad, I nearly passed out. Since my father had a brain aneurysm when he was 47, and I'm in my early 40s, needless to say I was a little concerned - especially when the headache hadn't gone away after three days. My ex insisted that I go to the emergency room, where they did a CT scan. They couldn't find anything wrong, and eventually the headache went away on its own. I get headaches fairly often (I've had one since about 2 o'clock this afternoon that's still hanging around, actually), but I'd never had one that bad before or since.
In the last six months alone, I've had shingles and a broken big toe (a bowling injury, believe it or not - my shoe stuck on the lane, and the rest of my body kept going). The shingles were nowhere near as bad as I expected from what others had told me, though - at worst, it felt like I was being jabbed with a needle from the inside for a second or two. The toe was worse, especially since I don't drive and I walk a fair bit. (I only have a two-block walk at either end of my commute, but even two blocks is not fun with a broken big toe.) Actually, the doctors' theory was that breaking my toe caused my body to lower its defenses, which allowed the chicken pox virus to reactivate.
But the worst may have been two or so years ago. I was on Skype with my then-boyfriend, and suddenly a headache came from out of nowhere that was so bad, I nearly passed out. Since my father had a brain aneurysm when he was 47, and I'm in my early 40s, needless to say I was a little concerned - especially when the headache hadn't gone away after three days. My ex insisted that I go to the emergency room, where they did a CT scan. They couldn't find anything wrong, and eventually the headache went away on its own. I get headaches fairly often (I've had one since about 2 o'clock this afternoon that's still hanging around, actually), but I'd never had one that bad before or since.
Broken arm.
You guys make me feel like a wuss.
You guys make me feel like a wuss.
It occurred when I was 15, and I dislocated my elbow one day riding home from the shops.
