Ask Lemmy

My father

Cluster migraines.

Pancreatitis. Intravenous dilaudid for that.

I've been lucky, just throwing my back into spasm.

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.

Heartbreak, death of friends family, migraines

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.

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.

spine surgery

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

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.

had a large abscess excised from my right thigh. they did a wet-to-dry pack instead of closing it. while I was under, they were able to get two full gauze rolls into the hole. the pain of getting it back out was the worst pain I'd ever experienced in my life

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

After I dislocated my kneecap, getting the ski boot pulled off.

Paper cut. Mic drop.

Cluster Headaches.

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.

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.

The very sudden and very quick pain I had in my back this morning. It was so bad I very nearly passed out.

Humerus knitting while I'm trying to sleep sitting up without moving it.