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What is the most painful physical injury you've ever sustained?

For me, it would have to be years ago when I was in my early 20's and got angry and punched a wall.  I was really ticked off about something and threw a strong right jab at the wall.  Little did I know that the spot I punched happened to have a stud behind it.

I shattered the knuckle bones above my right pinky. 
It was pain beyond the world!  :buggedout:

It's commonly known as a Boxer's Fracture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_fracture). (only my injury was a little higher up)

I went to the doctor and they treated it by putting it in a cast.
It didn't heal properly and to this day, I still feel pain sometimes on that part of my hand.
It's really going to be a problem when I reach old age.

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The second most painful injury was when I was in Jr. High school.

We were all outside for gym class and the ground was wet from the rain earlier that day.
The class was over and we were all running inside to go back to the locker room when I slipped and fell backwards on the rubber mat that was just inside the doorway.
My friend Larry was right behind me and he slammed into my back and fell over top of me.  When he did that, my right hand flew backwards...right into the door jamb.

The heavy steel door slammed shut on my right middle finger!

Technically, it was strong enough to completely sever my finger in two, but it didn't.
In an instant, the door slammed shut on it and seperated the middle knuckle.  It spread it apart at least a half inch and then the knuckle bones snapped back together.

I remember hearing a loud "SNAP!" and then pain like I'd never felt before.  I remember screaming in pain and all the other kids wanting to get a look at my finger.
We went to the doctor and miraculously, it was just a serious contusion.
They put my finger in a plastic/metal cast and for the next several weeks, I went around school looking like I was giving the middle finger to everyone.

How about you?
What's the worst pain you've ever felt?

I had a vicious sprain (worse than a break) in Sophomore year in high school.  I was playing basketball and while going up for a rebound.  A kid cut across me and stepped on my ankle thus caving it in.  I had a cast for a few weeks and did rehab for half a year.  I've sprained it minorly about 4 or 5 times since. 

Tore my ACL in a ski accident.

Spinal headache. I had a spinal done for a c-section and it caused spinal fluid to leak out. The pain was unbearable. I had it for several days before the doctors did a blood patch.
It was much worse than the pain from the actual c section.

Childbirth both times was painful for me to watch. 

For me it has to be when I had my knee replaced. The very day they did the replacement they had me standing on it. Now I have broken bones, been hit in the back of the head with a pool cue, played American football, been in numerous fights, torn my ACL, fought off severe infections, had several surgeries,  and even a couple of car accidents. But nothing even came close to the pain I felt that very moment I stood up on the knee replacement. The only thing that saved me from being in total mind destroying pain when I stood up was the morphine pump in me and even that was not enough to deal with the sheer hell I was in when they made me stand up right after that surgery.

I once had an Intervertebral disc slip back in 1991. It was the worst pain ever. I had to use a cane for two weeks and couldn't stand upright. The worst was getting out of bed in the morning though, a procedure that took up 15 minutes. I could only walk baby steps and with each step I was moaning with pain. I eventually got shots in the back from my doctor which took away most of the pain ... for the day. I also had to sleep on the floor with both my legs hoisted to straighten the back, which caused bonus soreness.

Ever since my disc slip my little finger on my left hand has been numb. I've did the physiotherapy thing many times but to no avail. Ah well.

I was sticking with my weightlifting routine really well, doing great workouts, muscles were nice and stressed out.  Decided to use a jackhammer to break up the concrete steps behind our house, which involved lifting the 50 lb thing up in the air a few hundred times.  Must have ripped out some muscles, running all the way from my trapezius on the right side, through my shoulder, down my right arm and all the way to my hand.  If I moved it occasionally, it was only miserably painful.  Trouble was at night, when I'd fall asleep for a half hour, the muscles would tighten up, and I'd wake up feeling like my arm was about to tear itself apart.  After moving it around for a minute or two, the muscles would loosen up and the agony would go away.  Then I'd have to try to go back to sleep again :teddyr:  After a few days it got a little better, and only felt like someone had smacked me over the forearm with a ballpeen hammer a bunch of times.  I still get weird muscle cramps in my back and chest if I move my arm wrong way.

Nothing major, a dislocated pinkie playing basketball.  Putting it back in joint was of course a lot more painful than injuring it in the first place. 

I've been lucky.  Although there was a time when the dentist accidentally hit a nerve while giving me a filling.  I could feel the pain through the novocaine, which worried me a little, so I asked her if that was normal.  She looked very concerned and gave me a prescription for narcotics and told me to get it filled immediately, before the novocaine wore off completely.  It was starting to hurt quite a bit and becoming almost intolerable before the pain medicine kicked in.  Probably would have been the worst pain I'd experienced if I hadn't spoken up.

When my son was 2 or so, he was sitting on my lap watching TV. Something happened and he kinds threw his hands up and cheered. When he did his fingernail caught my eye and put a scratch about1/2 inch long right across the iris/pupil. I could barely stand it hurt so bad, never had anything come even close to it. Once I got a 3" x 3" second degree burn on my neck from an oxy/acetylene torch, didn't even come close to the eyeball pain.

Another time, also when he was about 2, I was asleep on the couch and he shoved his finger up my nose. It's funny, when kids are at their most curious age, their fingers are as long as they can be and still fit all the way up an adult's nostril, AND, their fingernails are really thin and sharp. It felt like he hit the back of my skull, and my nose bled for a couple days.

That reminds me of when my brother & I were kids.
Our mom yelled out the back window that supper was ready so we both went running in through the backdoor.
I thought my brother was right behind me but he wasn't.  He was several steps behind and when the screen door closed, his head was turned in just the right (or wrong) way and the metal latch caught him right in the eye and literally sliced part of his eyeball.
I'll never forget his screams.  I felt so bad and apologized to him several times.

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I also recently ran into an old friend that I hadn't seen in at least ten years.
He had an eyepatch on and looked like a pirate.
I asked him what happened and he told me that about a year ago, he was fighting with his girlfriend while sitting in his truck.
He was in the driver's seat with the driver's side door open and she was standing outside the truck arguing with him.  He told me that she said, "F**k you a***ole!" and slammed the door on him as he was getting out.
The corner of the door struck him in the eye and literally deflated it.  Popped it inside his head.
OUCH!!!!   :buggedout:

I asked him what it felt like and he said it hurt so bad that he nearly passed out from the pain.  He said that he suffered from terrible headaches for weeks after it happened and that he had a difficult time adjusting to seeing with only one eye.

He's still with that same chick.
Yes, it's true.  Love hurts.

Wow, the same thing happened to my brother-in-law.  Except my nephew kicked him in the eye and his toenail scraped my brother-in-law's eye.

I've never had any really bad injuries that I can remember.  I accidentally broke a girls collarbone once.  It was during a game at summercamp that involved tackling.  I felt really bad after...   :bluesad:

Ahh, eyeball pain.  When I was 13, I was spending the weekend with my friend in the suburbs.  We were walking in this big field and she was whacking down all the tall grass/weeds/whatever with a big stick.  We came up to a particularly large weed-tree and she said "Hey Colleen! Now you see it -" WHACK! .. and the tip of the stick hit my eyeball full force.  I was pulling splinters out of my eyeball for HOURS!  Thankfully, it didn't do any permanent damage and I didn't need an eyepatch even though I wanted one so I could look cool.  I don't remember it being very painful though, just really uncomfortable.

Back labor was probably the worst pain ever, pain meds wearing off after a C-section the second worst.  Although I did have really painful intestinal gas once after having pizza and I thought my guts were going to explode and I ended up puking from the pain, that may have been up there with back labor.  My back went out after carrying heavy books in my backpack to and from school, that was really painful. I thought I was never going to walk again, but it got better!

PAIN, lol. as you know Im into Mixed Martial Arts, well I had someone put a heel hook on me back in 98, snapped the ankle bone right out of skin, blood and lots pain!

Had 2 teeth knocked out. Yeah ... that hurt. (alot!)

Finger that dont work, I had it snapped years ago, never got it fixed.

28 stitches on my forearm, bike fail lol, lots of blood!

8 stitches on my finger, glass window fail. (in pain for days, still had glass in the cut!)

Had I lump on my knee the size of Texas, after I fight I had, dont know what it was tho! it was bad.

Nothing as major as what you guys are describing. Worst one I can think of is something that happened a couple of years ago moving some furniture. We were bringing a big heavy wardrobe-type thing down a flight of stairs, I was on the bottom, and it slipped, pinning my hand for a few seconds against the bannister.

I think it hurt, but the funny thing is I can't remember that part. I remember being on my hands and knees not sure if I was going to pass out. But whatever pain there was subsided pretty quick. It took a chunk out of the back of my index finger but there's not a lot of feeling there anyway. I went to the doctor mostly because I wanted to make sure there were no bones in the hand broken that I didn't know about.

Did some nerve damage, I guess, as that finger joint is still basically numb. But all in all, minor league stuff compared to you guys.

Only other thing that comes to mind is stepping on a yellow jacket nest. Again, I think my brain kind of shut down to whatever was going on painwise, and mostly what I remember is dancing and slapping at my legs while part of my brain said "what the hell is happening on the bottom half of my body?" It took me a good 5 seconds or so for the conscious brain to figure out what had happened. THEN it started to hurt.

Sprained my ankle at the 1 mile marker for a marathon when I stepped in a pothole.  I continued.  More than 25 miles running against a steady grinding pain that eventually became so bad that I could barely walk as I got close to the finish.  In the end I was pushing myself a step at a time.  A Navy corpsman at the mobile aid station repeatedly asked me to please stop and let them treat me.  I finished the race.  They had to cut the bottom of my foot open to drain the blood and fluids, and told me that I probably caused permanent injury to myself.

That's my pain story.  5 hours of pain, pushing myself to take each new step and to be rewarded with another flash of increasing agony when I did.  Pain is an animal, and chronic pain will chew on you and chew on you until you scream for it to stop/

Another fun one I thought of - I must have  about 50 fillings total, and probably three of them were in a molar way in the back of my mouth.  One day, don't remember exactly how or why, but that whole tooth broke off.  Oh yeah, that was fun.  The constant, dull pain, I took so many aspirin (which didn't help a bit) that the stomach ache was almost as miserable as the tooth.  And try to drink something, oh...nice.  I'd think I was okay, but then a couple seconds later - yowza!  The dentist just pulled what little was left of the tooth out.  Ah...heavenly  :teddyr:

When I dislocated my left knee back in 1993. I had dislocated the other one 30 years before, but  the second hurt a whole lot more.  I was burning some pine limbs and tried to break one with my foot while bending the other end against the ground and it snapped back on me. When the paramedics tried to pick me up I was almost crying it hurt so bad.

Of course seeing your leg turned at 90 degrees is enough to make you cry on it's own.

I got stabbed about 3 years ago.

I'm so sorry to hear that, Circus Circus. Would you like to tell us about it?

Ouch! I had someone try to do that to me once but was too drunk to actually make contact. Granted I am not sure how drunk you have to be to fail at stabbing someone but this guy obviously was that drunk. He totally missed me and stabbed the bar next to me.

Less than 2 years ago, I had a medical problem that I didn't even know I had... and it culminated with my entrails basically going "pop." Unbeknownst to me, a big nasty pus-filled abscess had formed on the wall of my lower intenstine. One day it popped, causing a hole in the intestine that promptly began filling up with the now-released pus. The pain was INSANE, and I had no idea what was wrong with me. I was hanging out with friends when it happened, and I ended up spending almost an entire day in his bathroom groaning in pain. Finally, when the pain subsided, I went home, and spend the next 3 days or so laying on the couch, with the pain randomly spiking up and going down every three seconds. My mother came to me and tried to convince me to go to the hospital, but I foolishly brushed that idea off. I was convinced that whatever was wrong with me would just go away if I waited it out. Finally, on a Friday morning, she came to me again and tried to talk me into going to the hospital. I told her that I wanted to wait. I told her I'd wait out the weekend, and if I wasn't feeling better by Monday, THEN I'd go to the hospital. She wouldn't hear of it, and promptly dragged me to the ER right then and there. After a loooong day of testing and other B.S., I found out that if I had decided to "wait until Monday," I would've been dead before Sunday. I was starting to go septic apparently. They pumped me full of antibiotics and then rushed me into surgery first thing in the morning. It is STILL the single most agonizing pain I ever recall feeling in my entire life.

Owie.

Wow.  I can't compare to a lot of these stories. 

I have a knee condition where the tendons that hold my kneecaps in place aren't as taut as they should be.  Jolting my leg wrong causes my kneecap to slide out of place.  They pop back into place easily enough, and I've gotten to the point where I can almost overlook the pain of the pop-out (it's more shock and surprise than anything) and pop it back in and keep going.  Once it goes back in, though, the leg is stiff and nearly useless for the rest of the day. 

I've been strengthening my legs so I haven't had a pop-out in close to five years.  I am, however, apparently developing arthritis in both knees already and I've hit premature codgerhood because when I can predict storms with how my knees feel. 

Notable pop-outs...

The first one.  It was the first day after winter break, 11th grade.  Mom knocked on my door to wake me up, I stood up and immediately collapsed as my knee went out.  Mom called an ambulance and by the time they got here my knee was back in place. 

Hawaii, 2004.  Chest deep in the Pacific ocean, an undertow caught me going one way and the regular tide the other.  It popped right back in and Dad helped me to the shore.  I'm sometimes a little surprised that I didn't cancel my parasailign appointment later that day. 

May 2005.  I was at my girlfriend's house but had to leave to get ready for work.  She grabbed my leg and did her cutesy act, saying, "Nooooo, don't go!" and popped my knee out of place. 

As I was reading your story I was thinking that you were lucky to be alive to tell it. You gotta take the intestinal tract seriously. People die of blockages.



I had a minor blockage a few months ago, what they call an "impaction". I knew of deaths from obstruction so I did call into my doctor's office and get a diagnosis and prescription over the phone. Not before trying over the counter remedies of various sorts, including laxatives, with no effect. My bowels basically shut down for several days and I spent most of a miserable weekend in bed.

We don't think much about this part of our body but when it goes wrong you can have some serious problems.

The bowels: the unsung hero of our body.

*Embarrassed Uhhhhh I sprained my ankle once.......

Personally, I'm going to have to disagree with you on that.  I am always aware of, and appreciative of my bowels and all their power.  I occasionally sing of them as well.

Broken ankle, what they call a tib-fib. Both lower leg bones, the tibia and fibula, were broken. This happened while walking home with a buddy at 2am on New Year's Day around about 1992. People don't believe I was stone sober at the time. I'd actually missed getting a ticket to the big bash everybody else went to, so I called up a friend from out of town, and we went out to one of the local taverns for a relatively quiet New Year's Eve.

We had a few beers, left at closing time, walked across town to get some pizza, and I slipped on a patch of ice as we were walking back to my place. We were on the side of the road, a car was coming, so I went to hop over the low snowbank onto the sidewalk. Next thing I knew, my feet were out from under me. My left foot flew up in front of my face, while my right leg buckled under me and SNAP! I let out a scream that must have woke up a few people. Then I tried to get back on my feet, and fount that my right foot just flopped loosely. I don't know which was worse, the pain or the weirdness of it.

Wasn't too long before the paramedics showed up and put a pillow splint on it. I got to the hospital and was into surgery a few hours later. Still have a metal plate and a whole bunch of screws in that leg. Oddly enough, I was one of three people brought in on the same night with virtually the same injury under similar circumstances. I shared a room with one of them. Same thing, other leg.

The most painful part of the recovery was that I kept having this dream that I was driving toward a wall and trying to brake. I'd wake up pressing my right toe hard against the inside of the cast. Ow. Never had that dream before or since. I think my subconscious was deliberately messing with me.

Don't really want to go into detail about that incident, but there have been 2 other equally painful experiences in my life so far.

-November 2005, I attempted suicide (long story). I ran out of the house, saw a car was coming quite fast down the street and in a moment of madness threw myself into the road. I hit the windscreen, apparently cracking it completely, tumbled off the hood falling onto my head right on the edge of the sidewalk. I felt absolutely everything. From my back smashing the windshield, to my spine jolting when I landed on my head (thought I'd broke my neck), to my feet feeling like they had come off. The ambulance came pretty quick as some kids saw me do it and pretty soon the whole street was out to see. I was bleeding very badly from a head wound that required 29 stitches, but other that I got off easy with a fractured foot, 2 broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder and bruising. Yes I know, I was an idiot.

-September 2006, I was homeless, living on the street when 2 guys tried to assault me at about 3am. I gave them a good fight and knocked one guy's teeth out, but as I dealt with him, the other man had broken a bottle and came at me with a large shard of glass. I tried to move away, but ended up getting caught on my right forearm, tearing the flesh to the bone. Luckily, when they saw what had happened, they both ran off. I managed to flag down a police car, which took me to the local hospital and they sewed me back up. It was really gross tho', with my arm on a steel operating trolley, looking at flaps of skin either side of my arm and the bone staring up at me! I only had about 18 stitches for that and the scar looks really small now, but is still visible.

I can safely say though, that getting stabbed in the back was far more painful than both of those incidents.

Actually, it wasn't the result of blockage/obstruction, but rather diverticulitis, a condition I wasn't even aware I suffered from.

According to wikipedia: "Diverticulitis is a common digestive disease particularly found in the large intestine. Diverticulitis develops from diverticulosis, which involves the formation of pouches (diverticula) on the outside of the colon. Diverticulitis results if one of these diverticula becomes inflamed."

That caused an abscess. Abscess went kablooey. Next thing I know I have a man-made hole in my stomach and I'm crapped into a colostomy bag. I don't have it anymore (thankfully, they were able to reverse it after the internal infection had been wiped out and my intestines were healed, and BONUS: the surgeons were able to remove the other diverticula I had so now I don't have any, ANTI-BONUS: as a result, I now have to eat a freakish amount of fiber, even more than you're normally supposed to, which is a lot the way it is, and, so far, I've found precious few foods that are both high in fiber and pleasant to the taste buds... also, I crap a lot more, TMI- enjoy).

Also, I forgot to mention... while diverticulitus is apparently very common, but usually people don't get it until way, wayyyy later in their life. I got when I was 20. The doctors kept telling me they were totally baffled as to why I'd already developed it. I just blame it on having an unhealthy rectum.  I blame it on all the talking out of my a** I do.