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  • Getting an intraabdominal abscess punctured. You don't get sedation for that, since you need to follow the commands to they can check the progress on the CT, only the tip of the needle they shove into you has some painkiller on it.... allegedly. Which does not really matter as since they shove that thing through your skin and through your muscles and then into the abscess... there is literally no time for any painkiller to do anything anyway. I was shaking from pain.

  • When this comes up, my answer is usually when the first disc herniated in my back and landed square on my sciatic nerve. It made an audible pop sound, and then it was like electricity pulsing up and down my leg for the next few weeks. That was in 2005, and there's still days it feels like that. I couldn't even breathe without the pain increasing. Couldn't sit, couldn't lay still. It was hell.

    However, when it comes to the most concentrated pain, it's a toss up. I once dropped a bead of solder on my finger, and it went down to bone. Until it killed off the nerves and just felt throbby, that was fucking horrifying pain.

    The other that's a close second or outright tie was having a needle scraped across a phalange that was broken. It's kinda hard to tell which was more intense. Metal scraping bone was pretty fucking brutal, but it was almost immediately numb because that's why the needle was going in. The burn pain lasted longer, and continued to throb after it went numb-ish.

    I still point to the herniation as worst because while the initial intensity was maybe a tad lower (not by fucking much though), the fact that it not only didn't stop, but that pain meds barely touched it, made it traumatic in a way the others didn't.

    Mind you, I've been stabbed, cut, shot (just a flesh would though), burned in other ways, been hit with bats and rocks, and a passle of other minor events. So my perception of pain is weird.

  • Had an ear infection when I was 19 and one day my eardrums just popped. I cried for hours and still have impaired hearing and a tinnitus on one side.

  • Oh, it's my time to shine! 😁

    Some of this is quite gruesome, so don't read it if you're squeamish.

    I've got a serious health issue that's lead to lots of other health problems. As you can probably imagine, I've been in pain quite a few times.

    Years ago, before I found out about my health issues, I'd been out drinking with friends, and one had taken his shiny new bmx with him. I thought it was a good idea to have a go, but promptly fell off and landed on my elbow. I took a deep gouge out of the side of the joint, and it wouldn't heal properly. About a month later, at an outdoor music festival, some dipshit had rollerblades attached to his rucksack and managed to swing the whole thing into my elbow, bursting the wound open. That one hurt quite a bit.

    I went to the dentist once with a cracked tooth. The dentist didn't realise that it was infected, and tried to pull it out. They assumed that the anaesthetic wasn't working, so gave me more and tried again. Four times. On the bright side, I went back to work afterwards, not realising that I was high as a kite 😆

    Since I've been ill, I've had some interesting ones too.

    I had a kidney biopsy that went wrong. A biopsy is taken by cutting a small hole above the kidney as you're lying down, inserting a 'gun' that grabs a small piece of the kidney, then closing the hole. Because of the risk of bleeding, you have to lie still for eight hours. I've had a few biopsies, so after a few hours I knew something was wrong. My back and my lower abdomen were burning and in lots of pain, so I called the nurse. There was a feeling like I needed to pee really badly, like past the point of bursting, but I couldn't, and it kept coming and going. Eventually I managed to go, but it was agonising, and I passed something solid. The doctor came and gave me a mild sedative and I was catheterised. It turned out that they nicked the kidney during the biopsy, and it bled into my bladder. My bladder was then blocked by blood clots that only had one way out.

    My favourite one though was the 'helpful' doctor.

    When I found out about my illness, it's because I was in a seriously bad way. I had multiple organ failure, and was put into a coma. When I came out of the coma, I had several different lines going into my body where they had been giving me things like meds and fluids. One of the lines went into the right side of my neck but was due to be changed. This is where the helpful doctor came in.

    He brought a colleague with him to show him how the procedure worked, so explained everything as he was doing it. He told the other doctor that changing the line is quite straightforward, and explained that you have the option to give the patient some anaesthetic injections to make it less painful. He then explained that as it's mainly removing and replacing some stitches, giving the anaesthetic would actually mean giving more injections and needles than just doing the stitches directly, and would be more painful. Then proceeded to cut into my neck with a scalpel.

    Apparently he'd forgotten that cutting would be more painful than a needle...

  • I can't compete with most of these stories, but here's an example from my life anyway. I had minor oral surgery (gum graft) but they didn't get the lidocaine injections quite right so I felt a lot of the cutting and stitching as they were doing it. I just white-knuckled it so it'd be over sooner. Then I had to refrain from eating solid food for 2 weeks which also sucked.

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