What is the worst/most painful injury you ever had?

I always ask this question to people, interesting to hear the stories behind some injuries.

The worst I had was I had my small toe bone fractured by my older brother while we were on the trampoline, we both jumped and kicked each other and his foot hit my little toe and fractured it completely.

Yeah I haven't been hurt that bad...

 

Was playing with my cousin in a trailer, using it as a seesaw by jumping on opposite sides of the bed. Didn't look where I was jumping and ended up with an 8cm long glass shard jammed up my heel. They put me on the dining table and had the doctor fish the thing out. It probably left a scar, but I can't see it cause it's covered up by callus (or whatever it's called)
I was like 7 at the time

Btw it was this kind of trailer:

 

Most people here in the borg know i have sustained multiple injuries over my life... worst one in terms of damage was a helicopter crash in 1986 that resulted in 5 breaks to my spine and multiple other breaks along my body... but i actually dont remember that as i was rendered unconscious. i didnt regain consciousness for 2 weeks and i was on some serious drugs when i did.

I was also hurt in 1993 when a binder (but larger) broke loose and hit my right ring finger across the middle knuckle. it broke the knuckle in 9 pieces.. but it didnt actually hurt as my arm went numb up to my elbow... by the time i started regaining feeling in that hand i had already straighten the finger , splinted it and was eating over the counter pain killers.

the one injury that was painful.. i got hit by shrapnel in 2 places.. my left knee.. that was a small piece ( 4mm in size) it punched a hole into the side of my knee cap and lodged in the cartilage. that one wasnt too bad... it felt like a bee sting that progressively got worse... but the other piece hit me in the right hand it hit my middle finger between the first and second joint and lodged half in-half out of the bone. that one felt like someone had jammed a red hot poker inside my hand the pain was hard enough that i couldnt stand nor could i see... i still have that piece of shrapnel since it was a curved piece that had dug its way into the bone it was overly difficult to remove while we were in the field and there were many other people who required more immediate attention than me.

 

Appendicitis when I was about ten. We thought it was regular diarrhea at first and treated it as such. After about a week mom thought something was wrong and we went to hospital.
Imagine your insides being dipped in acid and your head hit with a sledge. For three days.
I was begging them to put me under as soon as we arrived at the hospital.
Oh, and the inflamed appendix burst when I was being operated.
That REALLY helped my digestion for couple of weeks after the operation. Not sarcastic at all...

The accident I had with a bike couple years later was somewhat painful too. Both wrists broken and damaged kidney. My left wrist had to be fixed with metal bars so the bones would grow back properly.
Fun times.

Having Sinusitis when I was in the army wasn't really painful, but feeling like choking to death when you had to do something physically demanding wasn't that nice either.

Appendicitis is still the worst. I never want to experience that again.

 

Not really an injury but the puncturing part before they flush sinusitis. The anesthetics didn't work because of severe inflammation of tissue.

Imagine trying to pick your nose all the way back. Now imagine instead of using a finger, using a sharp steel spike. Not a needle, an actual spike. Now, push it against the bone and really put some force behind it and scrape a little. Change spot, do it again, pushing the spike against skull bone. Do it for 5 minutes until you 'find the spot'.

That was painful.


Kicked in the nose, nothing broke and it wasn't really painful, more of a stunning and disorienting thing. Was during sparring and instinctive reaction was to turn around as quickly as possible, away from the opponent and fell on my knees but without pain. Just lots of blood pouring all over the white suit for extra dramatic effect.


What almost rivaled the near-failed sinusitis treatment was falling over in the staircase while trying to jump past the last few stairs. I made a misstep with left leg, the toes barely touched the edge of a stair but flipped and skipped past it and I essentially fell down, all of my weight from a jump falling on the center of my right shin. It hurt a lot, I had to roll up on the upper floor and I couldn't do anything and I couldn't say anything, I just lied there silent holding my leg in the air.

It left a big dent on the front of the shin and a bruise that took a long time to heal. The other day I was going upstairs and I noticed a dent on the solid wooden edge of the last stair that I could almost fit my little finger into.


But I haven't really ever experienced anything too painful like some of you. Mostly very short stuff that rank at most somewhere in the middle of 0-10 scale.

Of the longer term things, having pain in the lower back muscle was pretty annoying. Felt literally like having a knife twisted there every time I tried to move almost anything since it's one of those support muscles that hold up your body. So I had to lie down for a whole week and whenever I had to go to toilet or anything at all, I'd feel like getting stabbed every time I tried to move. It was humbling to get a small glimpse into the life of those who are unfortunate enough to be crippled. Just lying down, relying on others to do things and even the lying down felt painful at times. It's a lot better not to have pain and to be able to move around.

 

When my son told me I smelled like poo poo.

 

By far the worst injury in this thread so far

 

Ya'll need to be more careful.

Any way, I done have any thing to match some of those, but here we go. The worst pain I clearly remember was after a friend of mine got back from basic training, and wanted to try out some bokken (wooden practice swords) I had. We got out in the yard and tried to hit each other for a while, until he slammed a hard slash into my leg. Hit me in the side of the knee cap. I collapsed, and thought my leg was broken. It wasn't, but I did have a bit of trouble waking for a while afterwards.

About two years ago my knee starting hurting from time to time, and I'm pretty sure something did get knocked out of whack there.

 

I was bitten on the face by a dog, went into shock immediately didn't even really realize what had happened until the parents started freaking out (I mean, I knew I had been bit, but it didn't really -hit- me what had happened) was visiting some family friends, the other kids would sit on the dog like it was a horse, I was just apparently too much bigger for the dog, and not familiar enough. All considered it worked out alright for me, I feel bad for the dog though.

Gotta say the most painful thing I ever suffered though, was an ingrown toenail. Not the actual toenail, the six inch needle the fucking doc decided to ram up my toe in order to provide a local anesthetic to remove the nail. Never again.

 

hmm only 2 I can think of is boyscout camp where we were hiking through the woods (short hike not a few days so didn't need packs or anything) and since I walk (lazily? not sure but I walk slightly different so my feet arn't always off the ground not sure how to describe it. I guess my toes just go lower or something) stepping over a log my foot didn't completely clear it so I tripped. I did catch myself with my hands but tripping on the log ended up making my right knee hit my right arm and broke both bones in the forearm in 2 places so my arm was at close to a 45 degree angle from where it should be. bone wasn't piercing skin and the first doctor who came walked about because it looked gross. so had to wait a bit more for another doc who just grabbed my index and middle finger pulled and snapped the bones back in place since it was a greenstick break. I did also developed multiple stress fractures during bootcamp from running (alot of people do) and those can hurt like a bitch depending on where they were. Those arn't full fractures though unless you keep putting pressure on them.

arm didn't hurt though for the first 10-15 minutes. but it was hours before it was set.

 

Hehehe...

 

I pinched the palm of my left hand with a rivet squeezer once (3000psi force). Didn't get any bones though, so I was lucky. Just hurt like hell for awhile. Also smashed my knee pretty good in a motorcycle wreck. That one hurt quite a bit longer...

 

Class 2 sprained ankle which is a ligament or ligaments that have been partially torn. This was while I was in the marines. Foot was swollen crazy with red bruises

A year or so later

had both ankles sprained at the same time while in Iraq while having to do armed walking escorts with around 80lbs of gear on that generally lasted 3 to 4 hours.

 

My bloody back, was out of work for a week solid, and it's still achy. One would think when I broke my leg the pain would be up there... but this reverberated through my entire body, the leg (and other sundry of injuries including the road-rash from my bicycle) were isolated to a limb so I could easily redirect my focus.

Finding myself in spasms as I lowered myself to the washroom floor didn't help, either. In sum: no way to walk it off. Fun times.

 

When I was 14 I was in a major Car accident that broke my legs and some ribs, that was probably the worst injury I have ever had, however if we were to talk about the most painful "injury" was more recent after having a 10 inch incision made so that I could have a good chunk of my intestinal track removed... I have never had the option of dosing myself with morphine every 5 minutes before, but damn that last 30 seconds could be a nightmare.

 

Motorcycle crash. Dislocated right shoulder (basically hanging in front of my chest). Broke two bones, the tuberosity and the glenoid. Had to have a tendon relocated. I still don't have anywhere near full range of motion.

 

Neither of these are strictly injuries, but I think they fit.

Most painful? Herniated disc in my back that squeezed my sciatic nerve. I now know where exactly in my leg my nerve is because I felt the pain down my entire leg. A year and a half later and parts of my foot are still numb.

Worst? GI bleed that I didn't notice because I had a stomach bug at the same time and didn't feel any pain. I didn't know I was losing blood until I blacked out. Ambulance ride to the hospital where my blood pressure disappeared when I sat up, and the lab techs couldn't get an IV because, "my veins felt like a sponge."

There's a blood test called hematocrit, it's basically a % of blood cells to plasma. Normal range is usually in the mid 40's. After a unit of blood, mine was 27.

One helicopter ride to a bigger hospital and an IV inserted in my neck, I spent the night in ICU and a week in the hospital before I went home.