It's often surprising just how much minor injuries can hurt.
Sometimes after we stub our toe, prick our fingers, or hit our funny bones we feel like we're in almost unbearable pain.
Thankfully, this pain doesn't last long, and we tend to forget about these injuries in a short matter of time.
Particularly those who have the bad luck to learn what real pain is.
Enduring truly awful experiences, where the pain was so bad that sometimes they still feel it to this very day.
Redditor New-Selection7719 was curious to learn about the worst pain people ever experienced, leading them to ask:
"What is the worst pain you’ve EVER felt?"
Men Can Keep Their Mouths Shut On This One...
"Hemorrhaging ovarian cyst."- CaptainMcFisticuffs2
"I puked and went to the ER because I thought I was dying."
"I’ve given birth and the pain of the ruptured ovarian cyst was 10000x worse."- pretty-ok-username
Brittle Doesn't Even Begin To Describe It...
"Post biopsy for osteosarcoma (bone cancer) in my femur."
"After waking up from the biopsy they picked my leg up to slide an X-ray pad under it and the bone just shattered instantly as the tumor had deteriorated the bone to the point where the biopsy needle caused the whole structure to collapse."
"Without a doubt the most 11/10 pain imaginable."- Chaytup
ALWAYS Leave It To A Doctor
"An abscessed tooth."
"I was ready to rip the thing OUT of my head ALL by myself."
"That scene in 'Cast Away' where Tom Hanks' character used the rock and the ice skate blade to knock his own tooth out looked pretty attractive."
"I. want to add, if this happens to you, you should not try to yank it out yourself."
"There is something called 'referred pain'."
"Basically, your nerves lie to you and you feel pain somewhere other than the source of the infection."
"You could pull a completely wrong tooth."- Lopsided_Success_368
Ouch!
"The back of my eyeball and optic nerve waking up after emergency retina cryopexy, triggering a massive migraine that felt like I had a spike through my eye and into my brain."
"It was absolute raw unabashed hell, curled up with my head between my knees crying and screaming."
"Had to keep facing down because of the gas bubble injected into my eyeball to keep the retina in place, too."- Misophonic4000
Don't Let Their Tiny Size Fool You...
"Kidney Stones."
"Remember that scene on Alien when that thing ripped out of the people's torsos?"
"Yep, that's what I compare it to because that is what it felt like."- commonman54
Thank The Lord For Helicopters...
"I dislocated my hip and shattered the socket while snowboarding (I was 14 at the time)."
"But the worst pain comes later in this story."
"The closest hospital was basically a hut in this little hodunk rural town."
"The docs didn't know it was shattered and were going to try to pop it back in (they took some x-rays I guess)."
"They gave me some anesthesia to put me under, but it wasn't enough."
"They asked me if I was still awake, and I was fully conscious, but my mouth was numb & all I could do was barely mumble 'yes'," but it came out garbled."
"I guess they took this as 'yeah he's under' and tried popping it back in."
"That instant, I felt the worst pain I've ever known, my body instantly overpowered the anesthesia, and I sat straight up while yelling "f*ck" at the top of my lungs, and passed out from shock about 2 seconds later."
"They knew they f*cked up and airlifted me to an actual hospital about 300 miles away."
"148 stitches, 37 staples, 3 screws, and an insurance company that hates me & I'm good as new (ish)."
"I still have a feeling that my hip was only dislocated at first, and the little hodunk hospital actually caused the shattering of my hip while I was awake."
"But have no way to prove it."
"That happened 20 years ago, and I can still feel decent pain in my hip as I type this. I could easily get vicodin or Xanax, but have just learned to live with it."
"I still get out every winter to go snowboarding, I just stay out of the terrain parks now."- Derp_duckins
It Doesn't Need To Be Physical To Hurt
"14 years old, getting silently escorted to the principal's office to be told that my first real and best friend had been hit by a car and killed that morning."
"I have gone through a lifetime of physical pain, but nothing even comes close to the sundering of my heart that day."
"I'm 36 now, and I still cry for her, and who she could have been."
"I will carry her and my hurt for the rest of my life."
"We so often get wrapped up in the mess of what divides us that we often forget that grief and pain are a universal experience."
"You are not alone."
"I cannot promise that your grief will be something you can 'get over', but I can say, with some sense of certainty that it will get softer, with time."
"Be kind to yourselves."- Theazel
The Road To Recovery Sometimes Comes At A Cost
"The days following my first chemo session."
"I had pain in every bone and muscle in my body from my scalp to my toes."
"It felt like every bone was broken and every muscle was bruised."
"The pain prevented me from sleeping, and when I finally did sleep, I woke up 15-30 minutes later from the pain."
"I couldn’t even take a deep breath because it was too painful."- MissPotato9
This Could Have Been Prevented
"Death of my sister."
"Died in her sleep at 50."
"She had been working at a really toxic company for years after they had been bought out by a private equity fund."
"She could not leave because she needed health insurance for her epilepsy. Left that job on a Friday, was going to take a couple of months off and then had a new job promised to her for a wonderful company. Dead of a heart attack in her sleep on the Monday night."
"It was so unfair."- arkofjoy
Double Whammy
"A failed spinal tap."
"Followed by kidney stones."- chroipahtz
Sometimes, All You Can Do Is Laugh
"Gallbladder ruptured in the middle of the night."
"Morphine and fentanyl were administered in the hospital, and the pain just laughed at their pitiful attempts to dampen the agony."-JoboosMojo
The Worst Kind Of Pain Is The One That Doesn't Go Away
"At least physically - back pains have been beating me forEVER."
"Its not the severity even though it hurts but really how much it pisses me off when I'm sitting down its basically impossible to sit still."- Le_Brittle
Everyone Has Their Limits
"Gout."
"It was paralyzing."
"I’m sure there’s worse, but it was f*cking terrible."
"In bed for over a week."
"It was my knee."- smack4u
Wait Till The End...
"Felt constipated and uncomfortable, but told the wife I'd sleep it off."
"Woke up at 2am, delirious with pain, and too out of it to realize just how insane 'I'll drive myself, no need to wake anyone else up'' was."
"Still not sure how I made it to the hospital."
"I staggered into the ER, stared at the front desk, waiting my turn, sweat pouring off me."
"There was no one else in line, it just took me a little while to realize the nurse was talking to me."
"I couldn't remember my phone number when she asked."
"I could't remember my NAME. I basically threw my wallet at her and collapsed."
"The very next thing I remember that wasn't 'writhing in pain' was getting an injection of morphine in a back room."
"I could FEEL lack-of-pain flowing up my arm."
"I started laughing hysterically, saw my wife walk in, and passed out in relief. Apparently my gall bladder, which is supposed to be the size of a pea, had inflated to the size of a grapefruit and was about to burst."
"I've broken my spine, I drove a sharp rock THROUGH my hand, I got a vasectomy and a root canal without anesthetics, none of it came anywhere close to that insanity."- gamerthulhu
If Picking Your Nose Was Ever Justified
"I have had pretty extensive sinus surgery, and about three days after surgery, I was trying to brush my extremely tangled hair."
"I was kind of disoriented because you have to do these really painful and long saline rinses or the packing in your nose will harden and cause issues."
"So anyways, I slipped and hit myself in the nose with the hairbrush."
"In almost tears, I grabbed the scissors from the counter and cut the rats nest out of my hair and went and lied back down."
"I just had the worst migraine and pain afterwards."
"To this day, if I touch the bridge of my nose just right, I get this disgusting visceral reaction like there is some scar tissue there or something."
"It’s between that or my IUD."
"The insertion wasn’t terrible, but the cramps."
"My god."
"My fiancé is a first responder, and he admitted to me a couple years later that he was close to making me go to the ER."
"The pain was nuts."- RefrigeratorFew1583
Everyone has their own pain threshold.
That being said, before you ever say "you have no idea how much that hurt", chances are more people do than you might expect.
