Ask Lemmy

Chronic cluster headache sufferer here. To sum up, I’ve been: Shot, stabbed, shot a second time, broke 7 bones in various appendages, hit with a baseball bat, hit by a car, multiple teeth issues, and migraine headaches, sprinkled for fun.

Basically, I took steve-o’s motto and ran with it (your body is a ride, ride it until the wheels fall off).

None of this comes close to the lightest cluster headache I’ve had. The sheer panic, the knowledge of what’s about to happen, the inescapable amount of pain I know is coming… Fuck CH.

Top 3:

• Shingles in my eye / face / scalp.
• Appendix ruptured while I was on the toilet.
• Kidney stones (multiple times)

The circumcision I had in my mid teens. Well, not the circumcision itself, but the erections I would get in the morning which would rip the stitches out of my cock, bleeding until I masturbated with anesthetic gel to orgasm just to stop the pain.

Was bending a piece of sheet metal on a 10 ft. bending brake. Stupidly had both my hands in the jaws trying to adjust the workpiece when the jaws partially closed on my hands. Imagine having all your fingers sandwiched between two thick steel plates because that's basically what happened. It wasn't really pushing down but just the weight of the jaws alone was enough that I was stuck and couldn't get my hands out.

It didn't hurt initially. Just felt like very intense pressure. I started hollering for help. Eventually another guy in the shop saw me and came running over to open the jaws. As soon as he did, I got this sharp, shooting pain in all my fingers. I think I hopped all over the shop, screaming obscenities. Had to just hold ice packs all day to keep the swelling down.

Didn't lose any of my fingers. Didn't even break any bones, somehow. Just bruised them really severely. It hurt like a son of a bitch but I was incredibly lucky.

Fucking Crohn's Disease sucks. All of my "adventures" with it have been painful, but the one that takes the cake:

A couple of years ago, my GI wanted me to do a pill endoscopy test, which is where they basically have you swallow a pill that has a camera embedded in it, and it takes pictures while it traverses your insides. You're supposed to naturally "pass" it like anything else you eat, but in my case I did not, and it got stuck. My GI did not believe me, and it just kept getting worse and worse. To put a timeframe on things, this happened in early February of that year.

I had ER trip after ER trip throughout that year, they determined that it wasn't going to pass on its own and needed to be surgically removed, but since it was not "life threatening" they couldn't just wheel me into an OR immediately and have it done, it had to be scheduled. Took forever to find a surgeon to schedule me under. One of the times that I was in the hospital due to this, the doctor on my "care" team wanted me to do what she called a "supreme bowel cleanse" to see if that would dislodge it. I was hesitant to do it, but I was pretty much willing to do anything at that point to end this nightmare, and only because she promised me that if it didn't work, they'd take me into surgery and do it the old fashioned way. That ordeal was terrible, I've had Crohn's since before I was a teenager, I'm very used to doing colonoscopy prep - this was far worse than that, the pain was unbearable and the amount of bowel cleanse that they gave me must've been right at the border of their ethical limits (or at least, I imagine that has to be a thing, right?) and plot twist she did not hold up her end of the bargain when the pill still did not pass, instead she gave me a few days worth of pain meds and discharged me the next day.

My condition continued to get worse and worse, yet my operation wasn't scheduled till early July. The hospital that the surgeon worked for agreed to pre-admit me into their care 2 months in advanced because it got to the point where I could barely even hold down regular water and I had to be put on IV nutrition with a PICC line and all.

Fast forward to the operation day, they ended up having to do two surgeries in one go, the first being to remove the pill, and the second was to try to fix the damage that had been revealed on the camera. The moment I woke up from the operation I was screaming in pain, and begging them to put me back under (which they could not do). They kept giving me pain meds and I'd end up passing out eventually from the pain, wake back up, and the whole ordeal would start again. Eventually they put me on one of those self-administered pain med pumps where I could click a button every so often and it would give me some pain medication through my IV.

I didn't end up going home until the very beginning of September (first week I believe), and I had arrived there sometime in the middle of May. I will never do one of those pill endoscopy tests ever again. I also switched GIs since my current one at that time had refused to listen to me when I told her something was wrong at the beginning of the "experience".

The most intense physical pain I ever felt was waking up after impacted wisdom tooth removal. One side of my face was appr. 3x the size of the other.

The second worse was last week; waking up from anaesthesia after having all 22 remaining teeth removed. It's slightly better now and I'd put it at 8,5/10.

The worst pain I've ever felt was mental though. It started almost three decades ago when my father killed himself when I was a teen. To be honest, I never recovered. I'm a shell of a human being begging for release (death) daily while being too much of a coward to actually do it.

Oh, and after returning to work with 0 teeth, my coworkers now amuse themselves by making me say tongue breakers. I already knew they didn't like or respect me before all this, but this really drove a dagger into my heart because it was someone I never would have expected it from. I've been at this company for 10 years and in this team for 5 and I'm fighting a daily urge to follow in my father's footsteps.

He really had the right idea. I was pissed at him back then but I have more understanding and respect for his decision every single day.

Ok so here's the kinda crazy part. I'm a sideshow and fire performer. I've suffered large burns, I can drill into my sinus cavity, I had my tongue surgically split, I staple myself with an upholstery stapler all the time.

Nothing has beat dental pain.

Spinal Stenosis. Woke up one day feeling like my back was not only broken, but that I could feel the broken ends grinding against each other.

Losing people I loved.

Childbirth, my hand was killing me.

Toe-to-heel second-degree burns on both feet.

I was 10, and stood up in sand that had been heated by a portable barbecue. The irony is, one of the adults had moved the grill so nobody would step in the coals. It had sunk its little wire legs and had been sitting directly on the sand for a couple of hours.

I stood up, screamed and ran for the ocean. About halfway there, the blisters puffed up and I had to crawl until someone figured out what was happening and hauled me into the water.

1. Full bowel blockage
2. Ruptured appendix

With number 1, by the time I got to the hospital my shirt was wringing wet with sweat, vomit, tears, and blood. I took it off and told the ambulance driver to just chuck it in the bin lol

Kidney stones. I've had the tips of two fingers on my left hand chopped off, and even that didn't come close to the feeling of a kidney stone rattling down the pipework.

I have Medullary sponge kidney, which in short makes my kidneys a stone factory. It's a love/hate relationship at this point. On the plus side, I've found drinking at least 2 liters of lemonade every day has done wonders to stop my kidneys from feeling like they're trying to kill me all the time.

A spinal tap. It felt like a toothache in my entire body while a demon choir sang in a high pitched whine.

When I was 11 there was a chance that I had contracted meningitis.

I heard wild stories from paramedic about people with chronic pain.

It is not uncommon to get calls from relatives like: " Our grandma fell, broke leg, and didn't want to bother you. She is on other side of city and we can't get to her."

And it turns out that it is open fracture but because she is in pain all the time, she didn't think it is big deal.

Physical pain? Migraine.

I have had kidney stone, childbirth, and broken bones, also once a torn Achilles tendon, all hurt bad, none were as bad as a bad migraine. That is the worst pain I've survived. So bad I got hallucinations, crying and puking up anything even a bare sip of water, nothing but pain exists. Migraine is by far the worst physical pain I have felt.

I was shot in the eye with a bb gun when I was in 9th grade. It was absolutely miserable. Right after it happened, I had to practically get carried back. My cousin and one of my friends held me up on either side because I couldn't see anything and wanted to just lay there due to how severe the pain was.

The trip to the emergency room is a story too. A nurse in the ICU thought I was hit by a baseball despite the paperwork and asked me, a teenager that definitely didn't get to the hospital myself, if I knew my mom when she returned from the bathroom. After getting to the ER, I vomited up the entire stack of pancakes and the half dozen bologna sandwiches I had eaten that day (I was 14, teenage hunger). 2/10, do not recommend.

Getting hit by a truck while walking down the road, after the initial ragdoll physics were over. EVERYTHING hurt, from my hair follicles to my toes. Wouldn't wish it on anyone.

Gout in my knee. Gout anywhere has been bad. The knee was the worst.

No gout attacks in years though, keeping it under control.

loss

I've had so many accidents with some that needed surgery and nothing beats getting my finger stuck in the car door of an Uber. I'm just glad the driver didn't move until after I freed my finger.

For me personally it was getting some of my arms skin getting shoved between two desks that I had my arm resting on after someone slammed them together tightly during high school

Left a red line that took a while to go away

Edit I just remembered something wven more painful then this

I'm going to copy paste my comment reply to someone else below

"You reminded me of the one time I was visiting my uncle as a child and I ended up puking in the car because the sun was hitting the back of my head in summer, and this was Australian summer where It can get hot and humid

I don't know if it was a migraine but it was painful as fuck"

There was also the time i got rope burn from tug o war in primary school but the car headache that was potentially a migraine was more painful

I had a JJ stent removed without anesthesia. I have a penis so they enter this way to get it out.

I thought the pain of the kidney stones, which were the reason I had a JJ sten, twere the most painful thing I could have in my life. Turns out I was wrong.

Remember to drink, really.

Getting my nail pulled off.

Also, not exactly painful, but tonic clonic seizure.

1 Kidney stones. 2 tear in intestine. 3 fractured vertebrae

1. Severely herniated disc - I screamed at an ER doc that wouldn’t give me an MRI (or at least a referral) and tried to send me home with prednisone and ibuprofen. I had herniated my disc before but not as bad so knew what was up and I had taken prednisone for it and it just makes it worse. Doctor’s are so quick to be like “this is drug seeking behavior“ and I’m like yep can you also give me an MRI so I can be one step closer to treatment. Eventually got spinal surgery and mostly feel better.

2. migraines

3. sun poisoning on shoulders

4. colitis flare up

5. broken arm

6. sprained ankle

6 vertebrae, 4 ribs, base of my skull, scapula—fractured; it is a pain that has never faded and never fundamentally changed in 10.5 years. I can't escape it for even a minute. It is like a sword in my back, my spine feels like a twisted and knotted towel, and my mind like a voice shouting over the pain. Thanks for asking.

appendix

Had had a couple of bone brakes, but it felt like nothing compared to that pain, it also got away, was saved by a blood testing and going straight to operation table, after the pain ceased.