People Explain The Worst Amount Of Physical Pain They've Ever Been In

Reading this may motivate you to stay inside forever and wash your hands 37 times a day.


In all seriousness, I was struck by how many of these most excruciating event's of people's lives were brought on by some sort of pathogen or illness. It's a terrible irony that the microscopic organisms of this world are the one's most successful at taking down the clear top of the food chain.

u/mawseed asked, "What is *the worst* amount of physical pain you have ever been in?"

Arachnid Fury

Spider bite. Most likely brown recluse, not confirmed. Two bites left side of chest. Two bites left side. Single bite middle of back. All five progressed to full necrosis. Black skin and underlying flesh rotting off.

A slight breeze against my skin was excruciating. Skin should never be a liquid.

u/AngrySmapdi

A Perfect Storm

Tooth abscess in a pressurised cabin. The whole left side of my face was throbbing in agony. I could feel it behind my eyes too. I was actually in tears and wanted to die.

The amazing stewardess sympathised with my misfortune and gave me a little bottle of whiskey and some paracetamol.

u/MeMuzzta

Yellow in Nature--BAD News

Water flooding my ear canal thanks to a ruptured eardrum while scuba diving. (The pressure inside my head was indescribable. And for about 2 weeks I woke up to large highlighter yellow stains on my pillow -- WTF?)

u/___Art_Vandelay___

Didn't Expect This

I once went four entire days without being able to poop. Was essentially bedridden, had to call into work since the only movement I could muster was crawling to the bathroom to attempt to get whatever demon was plugged up in me, out. Was absolute torture, and no matter what I did to try to relieve the issue, it was all fruitless. The amount of relief when I was finally able to start emptying my bowels was indescribable.

u/Adaera

Let's Do the Twist

Testicular Torsion, all pain is less so now I've experienced that

u/Gerrard1995

Worse is Knowing it's Been Dormant in Your Spine for YEARS

Shingles. Every inch of my skin was on fire. It was excruciating. Being clothed hurt. A slight breeze hurt. I still have nerve damage on my back from it.

u/tzarina74

Emotional On Top of the Physical

I had a miscarriage 5.5 months along. My body flipped out and I continued to have contractions and bleed out for 5 hours. The pain was so great that when I'd have a contraction, it world render the pain meds (Dilaudid) useless even if I'd just gotten more. I ended up needing 4 units of blood (that's a lot).

u/thatgirlsnuts

Tick Check, Tick Check, Tick Check

Lyme disease. Any light burned my eyes, I was bed ridden for 22 hrs a day, writhing in agonizing pain hopping from joint to joint ( my joints not weed). Nothing helped the pain. I felt hopeless, almost 2 months before I started to feel better but 8 months before a full recovery. Took the doctors forever to find the cause of it. After I got better, I wasn't really better because I had lasting issues after. Turned out I had 2 tick born illnesses from 2 different types of ticks. Deer tick caused the Lyme, but a lone star tick caused an alpha gal allergy. I became allergic to red meat. God that was awful, I'm a steak and potatoes girl.

u/possumfinger63

Wonder Why They Call It That

Hell's itch.

It comes about a day after sunburn on a very small minority of people, some of the time. It's not actually sunburn, I think it's nerve endings dying or something, but it feels like being skinned, rolled in acid, fried and stung by million fire ants all at once. Everyone who's had it says it's the worst pain they've had, worse than they ever thought possible.

u/Scipiovardum

A Classic

Kidney Stone

u/BKeepME

Legit Eye Patch Use

I saw it soar through the air gracefully because the exact image haunted me for a few days after. It stabbed into my eye before bouncing off. The pure shock numbed the pain for the most part but the sound that came from my mouth as I screamed was high-pitched though I felt no pain just stinging followed by a wave of pressure.

I had begun minor blacking out as paramedics took me to the hospital where they put some glow numbing stuff in my eye. Turns out the pen left a crescent size moon mark from the middle of my eye. I had to wear an eye patch while taking hourly medicine for months.

No one at my school made a single pirate joke, a huge letdown.

u/icweiners69

Draaaaainage

Pilonidal cyst draining, unfortunately numbing it didn't really help at all as the anesthesia mixed in with the puss and got pushed out rather than numbing the area around the cyst.

u/kklolzzz

Why Is That Thing Still In There??

When I had appendicitis. Sharp dagger pain in my abdomen, continuous vomiting and dehydration.

u/zz889

Worst Version of Waiting for a Ride

About a year ago a kid going down the neighborhood hill on his bike lost control and crashed into me as i crossed the street. The impact fractured one of my ribs and broke my collarbone on the left side completely. I had to wait 30 mins for my mom to get back to take me to the hospital (getting an ambulance would have costed too much). The kid was ok, only because he was wearing a helmet.

u/_Evocative_

Short and ​Horrifying 

My baby evacuated himself in under an hour, start to finish. It felt like a comet was shooting out of me. There was so much pain that time, body, everything just got mushed together as if in a blender and I was seeing black and purple images.

u/TortillasaurusRex

Not Worth the S'More

Third and second degree burns. It is by far the worst experience I've ever had. I'd rather break bones then get burned. Burned my fingers and whole hand in a campfire accident and literally watched my hand and skin burn off right in front of me. And the pain after just lingers and doesn't go away for days, definitely my worst experience.

u/boyderrr

Why Did You Put Your Hand In There?!

I got sucked into a boat propeller when I was 14. 455 stitches, 55 staples. When I put my hand to the cut I could feel my bone( it was on the back of my leg.

u/jamz1988

This is the Time When a Deep Breath is Not Advisable

Pulmonary embolism aka a blood clot in my lung. Woke up in such searing pain I thought I was hit by a stray bullet

u/stupidrobots

Companies That Shamelessly Make Terrible Products

Reddit user ricinonthecake asked: 'what companies shamelessly make sh*t products, year after year?'

Be it for clothes, household appliances, or food, sometimes you know you can be one hundred percent confident with certain brands or companies when shopping that you will be getting a quality product.

Unfortunately, this goes both ways.

Some companies have a reputation for exclusively selling and manufacturing low-quality products.

One would think that these companies might reflect on poor sales and bad customer feedback, and attempt to improve their brand with each passing year.

Unfortunately, even if they still get items on the shelf, reviews on Amazon and elsewhere still seem to remain at two stars or less.

Keep reading...Show less

The paranormal is among us at all times.

The ghosts, the spirits, they "live" in their death.

Sometimes a coincidence or a phenomenon is something more.

Leftover essences have been seen and recorded.

Now not everybody is cool with every encounter.

I still have shivers depending on the mood.

But when will we all be on the same page and start living 'Beetlejuice?'

Day-OH!

That could help with the spookiness of it all.

Keep reading...Show less
white police car in wall
Photo by Conor Samuel on Unsplash

Everyone does stupid things, and it's not limited to when you're young either.

When I was 10, my best friend and I snuck out of her house in the middle of the night and hitchhiked to Tukery Hill for ice cream. I can't even count all the ways that could've gone wrong.

Eight years later, my friend and I drove his new car on the sheets of ice on our college campus, trying to see how fast we could go.

The tires skidded on the ice several times, and back then, we thought it was fun.

The stupidity spurred on by impulsivity doesn't ever truly go away.

Redditors can attest to that, as they are sharing what may be the stupidest things they've ever done.

Keep reading...Show less

Customer service jobs are not for the faint of heart.

Dealing with people at their angriest and rudest does not breed a positive work environment.

Customer service can be a downright toxic job.

And if it's not the customers setting your spirit on fire, it's the companies themselves.

Some companies seem to revel in creating discontent.

That's why these types of jobs have such high turnover.

Redditor Psychological-Name15 wanted the customer service reps out there to give us some truths, so they asked:

"Customer service workers of Reddit, what secret can you reveal from your former company?"

I want to know about the inner workings of Comcast!!

I loathe them!

Oh Dear

Jennifer Lopez Smh GIF by American IdolGiphy

I used to work in tech support for Citi Bank. The people working there are not intelligent. My favorite interaction went like this..."

"Banker - How do I type the upside down I?"

"Me - Ma'am, that's an exclamation point."

slappy_mcslapenstein

The Crappy People

"In every CS job I’ve ever had: we will bend over backward to help a nice person. We will expedite any complaint, give maximum compensation, and harass other areas of the business for you."

"We will do the absolute bare minimum to help a shi**y person and if you’re really bad, we will do everything in our power to make sure you get nothing but what you’re legally entitled to and it will be a process to get that."

11catsinahumansuit

"I don’t work in CS but 100% the same for us in IT a nice person will get new stuff while a shi**y person will get questionable secondhand crap that will take 12 months to fix! I will make sure that you wait as long as humanely possible to have anything fixed!"

Sharp-Demand-6614

Go to Holiday Inn

"If you ask for a supervisor calling Marriott you will just get another person who is not a supervisor, but say they are."

cryptnificent

"Yep. I've seen this done numerous times across multiple industries. Usually, it only involves an actual sup if it's a genuine problem or if they want to make a point."

"The last job I had was in towing junk cars. Two of the inside buyers, one male, and one female, would bounce that sup card around constantly. Idk how no one ever put it together. We'd get repeat callers and repeat sellers so I don't know."

ItsBobFromLumbridge

Heartless

"Worked at a contracted call center for Centrelink. The manager told us to deny as many emergency payments as possible and they would back us no matter what. They were actively working towards a culture that despised the callers and churned staff to get heartless right-wingers who hated the poor."

Rizza1122

"I feel ya. My best mate is a quadriplegic. Centrelink denied his disability pension because he wasn’t disabled enough."

Less-Storage

Go to Home Depot

You Are Dumb Patrick Star GIF by SpongeBob SquarePantsGiphy

"I worked at Lowes. I didn't know anything about anything in the electrical department yet that's where they put me without any training."

Eattherich187

Not training people is not just a Lowes thing.

There are too many unqualified people doing too many things.

Switcharoo

Drag Race What GIF by TAZOGiphy

"Can confirm it's an unwritten policy for deli departments in Coles Supermarkets to change the written expiry dates on their tickets so they can sell out-of-code products at full price."

REDDIT

A Little Sunshine

"I worked at a call center for the billing department of a major internet and cable service provider. We were authorized to give up to $90 credit per customer on their bill but only as a last resort. Always remember to be nice to all customer service workers. You never know just how much they can help with a friendly attitude."

Axel_Dunce

"Former call center employee here. Highly accurate. Use your manners, and well fix your issue. Anything else, just makes us want to take longer, and you won't get a credit. Just because we are authorized, doesn't mean you'll get the credit for being an a**hat. haha. I've been verbally abused a few times for asking them not to swear at me. Lol."

Ok-Ad-7247

LELU

"I worked for a major telco company for many years in something called a ‘LELU’ which stands for Law Enforcement Liaison Unit. This 'unit' is pretty self-explanatory, but it essentially is a team who worked directly with the police/FEDS to monitor people's information for things such as obtaining communications history of call logs, SMS loss, etc."

"However, most importantly, the software we used, we as agents could directly see all your SMS texts, including MMS and their explicit imagery of whatever you were sending. This would include sexting, naked images, family photos, and everything. There were instances where people abused this position by stalking or 'monitoring' their SO’s comings and going’s."

MidniteMischief

Cookies!!

"I worked at a cafe chain called 'The Cookie Man,' 95% of their cookies arrived in cardboard boxes layered with bubble wrap. The last 5% arrived as pre-made dough that we would bake on-site to make the place smell like fresh cookies."

"I also worked at a cupcake shop. It's literally just packet mix that you add eggs and oil to before baking/piping pre-made icing onto. Don't waste your money on these places, 90% of these chain shops are the same and most are severely underpaying their workers (this is for Australia btw). Just purchase some packet mix from the supermarket and call it a day."

Frequent-Selection91

Look in the Back

"I was a Store Manager for a very large grocery chain and I can tell you that 95% of the time when customers complain to the manager, we may be professional and show empathy, and even resolve the problem."

"But then we usually just make fun of or talk crap about the person who complained to the other employees. And when a customer is really rude when we go 'look in the back' for something, we legit just stand around and talk to other employees, and make zero effort to look for the item."

A_Womans_Thoughts

From the Box

Kaitlin Olson Brunch GIF by The MickGiphy

"I once worked at 'the area's premiere day spa'; the mimosas were made with Sunny D and not real orange juice, and the wines came out of a box."

SailorVenus23

Sunny D and champagne?!?!

What in the name of Lucifer?

Who does that?!

Do you have anything to add? Let us know in the comments below.