Unusually painfull things

[icupnimpn2]

Was traveling somewhere on a passenger plane. I think a change in cabin pressure cause my teeth to shift, and suddenly something was pressing on a nerve in my mouth. It lasted for maybe a half hour but I thought I would go mad. There was nothing I could do about it. Had never happened before and never happened again. Has been maybe... 10 years since?

I don't get too nervous about flying, but every time I step on a plane I'm reminded for a moment of that experience and I worry it will happen again.

[The Innocent]

I had a similar thing happen while scuba diving—a tooth with a small cavity (that I wasn't even aware of) had pressurized fine going down, but coming up the air inside the fissure expanded and cracked the tooth in half. It made the gradual, controlled ascent into an agonizing crawl, and once I got to the surface and choked out my regulator, I reached into my mouth and tore the tooth out in one impressive movie motion.

The worst pain though was when I had my gallbladder out. The surgery itself was fine, and the recovery in my abdomen wasn't so bad, but they fill you up with some gas when they do the operation, and the resulting gas bubbles under my diaphragm hurt my shoulders. They told me it would happen, but there was no preparing for how badly it hurt. Even the meds I was on (which were fairly potent) couldn't shut off that three-day shoulder ache. I couldn't even raise my arms to set them on my computer desk.

[Shane]

Cluster headache is probably the worst pain that humans experience. I know that’s quite a strong remark to make, but if you ask a cluster headache patient if they’ve had a worse experience, they’ll universally say they haven't. Women with cluster headache will tell you that an attack is worse than giving birth. So you can imagine that these people give birth without anesthetic once or twice a day, for six, eight, or ten weeks at a time, and then have a break. It's just awful

Our patients were disabled by the disorder and suffered from bouts of pain from two to twenty times a week. They had found no relief from the usual methods of treatment. Their pain was so severe that several of them had to be constantly watched for fear of suicide. Most of them were willing to submit to any operation which might bring relief

There is no cure for these, even the cause is not known.

[Spengbab]

Oipoi - what is it you find so mysterious and ungraspable about the quote feature?

As for the worst pain - having a molar drilled, cleaned and filled without an anasthesic. I was around 14 years old at the time, but I can still recall the sensation in my mouth. It was like the dentist took out the nerve going into the tooth and decided to play it like a violin string.

For some reason I was even more scared of the needle used to numb your gums than the actual drilling, but after that, I always went for the shot if I needed a cavity taken care of.

[westyfield]

No idea why, but occasionally when I point my right foot in a particular way* something shifts and paralyses my foot, causing ridiculous pain. I'll be unable to move my foot below the ankle for 5-15 minutes, until it wears off (sometimes gradually, sometimes very quickly).
This happened once when I was lying on a sofa. I stood up, felt a twinge, thought it was nothing, walked out of the room. It started to get worse and I realised what was happening. I tried to walk back and sit back down on the sofa. Instead I blacked out from the pain and collapsed face-first (fortunately I was close enough to the sofa to have a nice soft landing).
*Annoyingly, the angle my foot goes to when I tread water is that exact angle, so I have to be really careful to not extend my right leg as far as I'd like when I do so.

Runner-up: Chopping chillies, thought I'd washed my hands thoroughly enough, went to the toilet. Apparently lemon juice helps remove chilli juice, so since then I always keep at least one lemon in the fridge.

[Shane]

No idea why, but occasionally when I point my right foot in a particular way* something shifts and paralyses my foot, causing ridiculous pain. I'll be unable to move my foot below the ankle for 5-15 minutes, until it wears off (sometimes gradually, sometimes very quickly).

Happens with me too, and at the most inappropriate of times too. A few weeks back it happened while I was taking a poop. The other time it happened when my father tried to wake me up, I'm pretty sure he assumed I was just trying to hide my morning wood.

[magnus1969]

I was trying to take a security tag off a game once - it was one of things with two thin pieces of metal in plastic, and it cut a quarter of the way into my thumbnail, not nice at all.

[Bhagan]

When I was a kid I jumped off my swingset and landed on my wrist with most of my weight behind it. It was fractured, but it wasn't terribly painful as I recall. Years later I fell backwards over a tree stump during a game of Capture the Flag and struck the same wrist on the ground. No weight behind it, but this time it reduced me to tears

[Firkragg]

When I was a kid and went to kindergarden, we were out on a trip to the beach. Everyone was throwing rocks into the ocean, see who could throw furthest and so on. Suddenly I'm lying on the ground with a Huge headache. My twin sister, who was standing behind me at the time, wanted to throw a rock over me but misjudged. This was back at the time when cellphones weren't common yet. I don't know how but my dad (the kindergarden teacher responsible for us) got hold of a taxi. I've tried a lot of things since then but that was the most painful thing I've ever experienced. Longest car ride of my life, felt like hours to get to a hospital.

Didn't suffer any permanent damage and its oh so fun teasing my sister with "I could have been a rocket scientist, now i'm studying economics, pfah!".

EDIT: Shane and Westyfield, could those be cramps? Happens to me too if I move my toe in a certain way. Runner up to worst pain ever, coming home after a jog, stretching, showering and then falling asleep. Then suddenly waking up, feeling a cramp starting at my toe. Funny thing was, I thought I was having a nightmare. Next day my leg feels completely destroyed and my shoulder feels very sore. I go into the bathroom, look into the mirror and see bite marks on my left shoulder. Apparently the pain was so intenste I had to bite down on something. So for gods sake, stretch it if you feel a cramp coming!

[westyfield]

EDIT: Shane and Westyfield, could those be cramps? Happens to me too if I move my toe in a certain way. Runner up to worst pain ever, coming home after a jog, stretching, showering and then falling asleep. Then suddenly waking up, feeling a cramp starting at my toe. Funny thing was, I thought I was having a nightmare. Next day my leg feels completely destroyed and my shoulder feels very sore. I go into the bathroom, look into the mirror and see bite marks on my left shoulder. Apparently the pain was so intenste I had to bite down on something. So for gods sake, stretch it if you feel a cramp coming!

Yeah, could be. It's weird though, they don't only happen if I've just been exercising - I can have been sitting in the same position for hours and it'll suddenly go. At least now I know they don't last long, the first time it happened I was in a pool and I thought I'd trapped a nerve or something.