The worst pains for me are not the most painful ones. Pain that is sharp but also unpredictable does it for me.
Kidney stones were very painful bit were over in about 20 minutes.
Ruptured appendix was very painful for a few hours until surgery.
Shingles on my face and trigeminal nerve was very painful, but I didn't know how long it would last and the paint was unpredictable, so I struggled to cope with it. Lasted about 4 days from memory.
So, I'm kinda with the OP on this and can understand how toothache can be so bad.
Ever since I had kidney stones my pain threshold for bodily issues has increased. Most head related one floor me though, sinus a earache being the worse as there is no respite.
Incedently I had a female nurse practitioner one tell me that kidney stones were far more painful than child birth. My wife still didn't believe it.
It's not the worst but there's something really un-ignorable about toothache. Also trapped nerves and the like. Maybe it's that it's really the nerve itself producing the pain rather than reporting it, or something?
Like, breaking my hip was bloody feverish agony but I could sort of set it aside- I could still focus normally, etc. But bad toothache just crashes my brain, I can't think about anything else.
Almost exactly 5 years ago I suffered a double open fracture at the ankle and needed a huge amount of surgery to save the leg and repair the tissue damage. Unfortunately a couple of weeks post surgery I suffered a pulmonary embolism due to clots going to my lungs. I can honestly say the level of pain was beyond description. Initial accident, broken ribs or toothache I’ve previously had are not even close.
BJJ practice, tried to resist too hard with a considerably larger opponent in sparring. Tore my costal cartilage in two places and separated three ribs at the top from my sternum.
Hurt so much I thought I was going to wet myself, then faded out on the mat for a bit.
Opioid painkillers helped a lot, until I realised two days later that they had made me constipated and I kept on reinjuring them each time I went in the mornings for weeks.
Worst thing was it all happened because my ego got in the way, all completely avoidable and I still have lumpy reminders an occasionally clicking eternal joint 15 years on… 🤷♂️
Infected anal fistula, it turns out you have many many sensitive nerve endings round your bum end.
I was in agony, wife was looking after two young kids, so I got a mate to take me down the hospital.
Queue him going the short way, to get there faster; it felt like he was smashing over every speed hump intentionally. One of us saw the funny side and it wasn’t me.
As bad as when they've operated to dig it all out and the road out of the hospital has a speed bump every 20 yards.....
First up for me is when I had an operation on my wrist which involved a bone graft from my hip. The next day I was just home and lying on the sofa when I sneezed. Thought somebody had shot me like that scene in Pulp Fiction.
Second incident was upending a mug of black tea over my crotch. I was in a quiet public car park but I didn't give a flying fox as I jumped out the van and whipped my breeks off. Luckily most of the burns were on my inside thigh. Thought I'd be back at work in a couple of days but I was off for two weeks.
Infected anal fistula
Loved their Peel Session.
Getting your knob caught in a car door is the worst I reckon.
Another one here for ruptured appendix, or more specifically when they tried to straighten me out of the foetal position to CT scan the abdomen to try to diagnose it. Apparently the scream travelled well.
Although an ear infection that eventually ruptured my ear drum comes pretty high up the list too so I can understand where the OP is coming from with tooth ache.
I can tick the toothache box, really painful and never ending until I burst the abscess, that was so much relief.
Worst pain I have ever experienced all be it very brief was having an anesthetic needle in my face I have never gripped a chair that hard in my life.
The worst sustained pain for me was an infected molar earlier this year and a bout of epididymitis I had a few years ago. I certainly didn't know what toothache was until that!
It's interesting that with all that pain I was told just to take aspirin or NSAIDS, but when I had some minor shoulder surgery a few years ago I was loaded up with boxes of opiates. The shoulder pain was about 5% of the toothache or epididymitis!
Toothache the worst pain ?.
I'd say not.
I've self extracted 3 teeth over the years, the last was while waiting to get an emergency appointment at the dental school, I waited for them to open at 9am and was there since 6am(in a homeless unit) I just forced it out and they took care of cleaning up thew area.
Thankfully all were frontish canine teeth, couldnt have got out a molar.
Worse than that was rupturing a disc and cycling to the top of the road to buy coffee. It was agony to get there and after locking the bike, was a stagger to the shop and the return journey was worse. I then proceeded to lie on the floor for 4 days pretty much unable to move without being in agony, and the longer i was there the worse the pain got.
Eventually the family and emergency doctor got me an ambulance into an acute ward for nearly a fortnight. It was morphine all the way. I'd count that as the worst state ive ever been in, made worse by the muscles being in spasm and completely locked up. It took close on three months to recover and now years later i cant be in bent or kneeling without being in pain
what was bad about it was i couldnt sleep in that time any more than 20 minutes and had a clock beside me and i literally watched the minutes very slowly tick by for 4 days.
Are you sure they got it all out Tony? It's usually sweet relief after an extraction, little bit of soreness but not generally much lingering pain. Toothache and earache, nothing worse ☹
sprained ligaments in the sacroilliac joint is pretty painful.
anyways, this thread has reminded me of this joke
>
I mowed the lawn today and after doing so I sat down and had a cold beer.
The day was really quite beautiful, and the drink facilitated some deep thinking as I pondered an age old question:
Is giving birth more painful than getting kicked in the nuts?
Women always maintain that giving birth is way more painful than a guy getting kicked in the nuts, but how could they know?
Well, after another beer, and some more heavy deductive thinking, I have come up with an answer to that question.
Getting kicked in the nuts is more painful than having a baby, and even though I obviously couldn't really know, here is the reason for my conclusion.
A year or so after giving birth, a woman will often say, "It might be nice to have another child."
On the other hand, you never hear a guy say, "You know, I think I would like another kick in the nuts."
Suffer with migraines and had one in my teens that the GP thought was meningitis. Vomiting, nosebleeds and pain in my head that actually made me scream. Genuinely remember wanting to die just to be rid of it. Had to be strapped down by the ambulance crew and then pinned down for a lumber puncture when I reached hospital. I Was given a massive tablet, hooked up to a drip of something and then everything was good and seriously trippy for a while. By far the worst pain (and thing) I’ve ever experienced and wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
Kidney stones are by far the worst pain I've ever felt, earned me a trip to hospital and a morphine injection as they couldn't get me strapped down for the journey 🙁
An abscess was just misery though.
Not if you’ve ever had to pass kidney stones.
I told my wife what the doctor said to me, that passing kidney stones is considered more painful than childbirth. “Hmm male doctor was it?” was all she said.
😀
I've had a mother who's also had kidney stones tell me that the stones were far worse than child birth. I thought she was being sarcastic but turned out not to be the case.
I’ve fortunately not suffered too many serious issues, and managed to avoid toothache, but I once got a sinus infection, and the pain was almost intolerable. My then g/f and I went to the only late-night chemist to try to find something to clear it, and the assistant showed me a Vick Sinex, which had only just come on the market, (early 1970’s), so I bought it and gave it a try. The relief was so overwhelming I nearly cried from the pain going away!
The other injury was when moving my work desk from the corner of the room I used, it was ‘L’-shaped, and as I pulled one end I got trapped behind the door and twisted.
I had to lie flat on the floor for half an hour, and my work colleague looked at me and said, “bloody hell, you’re a horrible colour!” I went grey with the pain, I just couldn’t move. It still causes me problems, over twenty years later, but at the time I couldn’t describe the pain, I didn’t have words.
Absolutely the worst in the world that I've experienced. 10 years ago i had head splitting agony and dentist insisted nothing wrong on xray. Week later huge abcess. 3 sessions of intensive root canal. Same tooth last feb the worst pain of my life, 48+ hours of my whole jaw and head feeling like a lead bullet was repeating trying to burrow outwards. Honestly wanted to die if it wasn't going to stop. Lot's of codeine numbed it for a hour or so but then it returned. The tooth took an hour of yanking, drilling and chipping away to get out in bits and the dentist was out of breath with the torque she was applying to my jaw. I now have serious phobia around dentists and just went today for a check up,a filling needed repairing and for some reason took an hour, 2 injections only for her to say to me at the end sorry but it got wet from too much saliva in your mouth so i will have to do it all over again after Christmas as you are too swollen now. Bloody brilliant.
I’ve had a lot of the above mentioned troubles and gall stones was the worst pain by a long way.
Because my gp dismissed it as trapped wind and a low tolerance to pain for 18 months, I had about 20 or so episodes of suffering. The first few were scary as I didn’t know what it was or how bad the pain would get.
Used to take 5 hours to build into the worst but I felt it coming on so could get myself home and in bed. Was very strange as at the height of the pain, I felt myself drifting away a bit and couldn’t do much other than lay down.
Then when the pain subsided it did so at such a predictable point I knew that was coming as well. Very odd but a great feeling of relief. Almost like keeping rocks in your mouth for the pleasure of spitting them out.
Most will probably wonder what I am going on about but those that have suffered multiple times with stones may get it.
When I eventually got the gp to send me for a scan, they were found and my gall bladder removed. Bit odd waking to find the stones in a tube on my table.
Having said all of that, toothache and ear pain is still nasty as it is relentless.
Getting your knob caught in a car door is the worst I reckon.
I'm torn between wanting to hear the story and really not wanting to hear the story
I forgot as a youngster the foreskin caught in the zip of my Wranglers and not wanting my mum to see it, the reverse did work but it effin hurt
Had a molar abscess a few months ago. The worst 4 days of my life until the antibiotics kicked in. Double doses of co-codamol and ibuprofen did nothing. Think I went 48 hours without sleeping a wink due to the pain. Lay with my face on an ice pack and wept. Was fantasising about getting pliers and ripping it out.
Had the root canal last month to clean it out and the dentist said it was one of the worst infections he'd seen
Posterior shoulder dislocation... didn't hurt a bit when i hit the tree (motorcycle enduro) when the Military Surgeon at Catterick Garrison put it back... **** me full of morphine and i just blacked out.
The orderly said it sounded like pulling your welly out of wet mud.
I’d probably swap it for the sodding sciatica running from my hip to the back of my left knee right now………………
"Not if you’ve ever had to pass kidney stones."
Been there, done that...
Add in hiccups the day after heart surgery, and combined they're nowhere near as painful as that figure of fun -- Gout!
+1 on gout - worse than an anal fistula that I had to wait 18 months for an operation for 35 years ago! Used to get get an attack and sometimes be crippled for over a month at a time. Figured out that quadruple the dose of Indomethacin twice in 5-6 hours sorts it out nowadays - took quite a lot of experimentation before I sussed that out - leaves you completely confused, but pain free. Not suffered with it much since they doubled my Allopurinol daily dose.
Ribs for me. I crashed skiing and ended up chest planting onto the ski binding. Couldn’t sit, couldn’t stand, could just about lie down, but then couldn’t get up. Agony for 4 days.
Full on attack of gout has had me in tears once or twice.
Rupturing my cruciate ligament was a bit nippy to say the least but the pain subsided after a couple of minutes.
Had my vasectomy about a fortnight ago. Nowhere near as bad as the first time I had a tooth out.
But then my other tooth extraction wasn't as bad as the first either.
.
What is the point of pain receptor nerves in teeth anyway? I get it for say hands, it says move the hand away from this stabby/burning/whatever thing, but what's the evolutionary point of painf teeth?
What is the point of pain receptor nerves in teeth anyway? I get it for say hands, it says move the hand away from this stabby/burning/whatever thing, but what’s the evolutionary point of painful teeth?
Probably to alert you to a problem as toothache is generally the by product of infection or other damage. Not really toothache as such I suppose, more face ache 😉
Well, I don't know about worst pain, but having just waded through most of the last two pages in one drop I feel clucking nauseous.
I've 'enjoyed' lots of types of pain in my life...
Compound fracture of the right elbow, at the same time as a spiral fracture of the left wrist has stayed with me for more than a decade now, laying on the floor in agony waiting for the ambo to find me still haunts my dreams sometimes.
Big old OTB crash on Climach X, landed on a pointy rock just right to whack my coccyx left me writhing on the floor like a stabbed snake, and using an upright vacuum as a walking frame for a week.
Last year, just before Xmas I had surgery on the wrist I'd broken 10 years before, because of worries around covid and generals I had it with a block. 4th surgery for that crash, it was complex, there was a lot of blood, drills and stuff, the needle in the armpit to put the block in was horrible, but when it wore off just as the surgeon had to increase the size of the wound caused me to levitate momentarily off the table and everyone else jump too. I've never made a sound like that before.
Tooth ache, yep, that sucks arse. I once had a double abscess, two large pockets of puss in my right cheek, because I used to hate dentists. I looked like I'd been beaten up. The pain was horrible.
Really thought, they're all just honourable mentioned, and yes like all men, I know the sickening pain of a hard blow to the spuds.
No, the worse pain I've ever had was a Gout attack in my knee, it was 3 times the size it was the day before, sleep? I couldn't hold a thought in my head. For 3 days until the meds started to work, I sat very still, sweated and swore, despite the best efforts of 30/500 Co-codamol and diclofenac.
Worst 3 for me have been
Foreskin caught in zipper of my jeans, years of on off earache which ended with complete loss of hearing and 2 lots of surgery to correct.
But Worst was tearing a 3mm steel ring piercing through my nipple 😩
My son jumped on my nuts when he was 4. I passed out.
Waking up after surgery to repair a ruptured Achilles tendon, I genuinely thought they had amputated my lower leg the pain was that severe.
The nurses realised I'd woken up, gave me pethidine then I started having a conversation with a radiator.
I don't do well with painkillers.....
Gallstones for me so far. Worst attack so far, was 5 hours doubled up on the living room floor through the night. Pre op assessment in two weeks time, fingers crossed
Shingles meant to be one of the worst.
But deep tootache / sinus infections register about the same for me.
Ribs, sternum, clavicle, meh. They get up and finish stages of the TdF after breaking those 😉
