How much pain?
 

How much pain can the human body withstand until it shuts down?

I'll let you know in a few weeks.

Ask the women
 

because they will tell you there is no worse pain than childbirth.

Actually, this could well be true. I'm glad I'll never have to go through it! Really men, can you imagine passing something the size and weight of a bowling ball?

If you measure pain on a 1 to 10 basis with 10 being blackout i've witnessed a 10 and, IMO a 12 or more.
The 10 was a result of a friend kicking his motorbike in anger. There was a gap between the inside of his boot and the steel safety cap. Half of his big toe went down the gap, the other side stayed inside the steel cap. He screamed, looked at me in anguish then fell over unconscious, albeit momentarily. When he awoke he began screaming again.
The 12+ was hammering a too big dynabolt into a too small hole, while perched atop an aliminium extension ladder. (15 feet )
The hits were getting harder until one went astray. His thumb literally exploded. Blood went amazing distances. He instantly went limp and fell/collapsed backward. Somehow his legs fell through the rungs leaving him dangling upside down about 5 feet above the ground. He didn't regain consciousness for at least a minute. He too began screaming and didn't stop untill the ambos arrived with happy gear.

ow fuck me on the #12 novice.

The problem with pain is there is no way to quantify it, you can't say that X is say worth about 4.56 painometers or so.

That said I feel this is going to be whicey thread.

Telefunken: why?

Large steam turbine blades are attached to the rotor with a machined base called a christmas tree root that fits tightly into a similarly shaped groove in the rotor. In the field, the blades were driven into the groove with a sledge hammer. The bladers who do this for a living, have arms like the Govenator and wail on a brass drift, being held by their partner, with that 12 pound sledge.
You already know where this is going and it's not pretty.:vomit:

I agree. The problem with pain quantification is that some people are just plain whiney when thay are sick or in pain(not unlike myself) and others (like my dad) aren't affected by pain like regular people. Obviously having your big toe sliced in half is gonna kill, but on not so serious injuries and maladies there is no way to compare extent of pain and pain thresholds since we all respond differently... just my inexpert 2 cent!

99, you poppin' one out? Congrats!

Re: Ask the women
 

I've heard that a man can experience this level of pain by passing a large kidney stone. It's obviously not as large as a baby, but relatively speaking, it stretches things to the same painful extremes... or so they say. There's no way to compare, so no one will ever know. Natural childbirth is probably much more painful.

I've always had a high pain threshhold, personally. If I complain at all of discomfort, then you know it really hurts. I remember when my finger was inadvertently slammed in the door of a 1973 Dodge Charger a few years back (a huge car with doors weighing about 150 lbs each), and not making a peep. I just looked at my finger and thought, "Hmm. THAT was unpleasant." The fingernail turned black and fell off... all that good stuff.

Hey 99... if that's a hint that a baby's on the way soon... big congratulations.

Re: Re: Ask the women
 

I *so* hate that analogy.
I passed two stones at once a few years ago, one from each kidney - yay, I had twins! - and the entire time I was in the hospital, I was begging for painkillers. A nurse commented to me, "Women can take more pain than men." I replied, "I can't. MEDICATE ME!"

My housemate passed a single stone a month later, and he was drugged immediately. Of course, he's also a much larger person than I am, so perhaps they were more afeared of his pain reactions, but still...I hold a grudge.

(And I really don't recommend the experience to anyone.)

Re: Ask the women
 

I don't know what causes the most pain, but I can tell you that childbirth MUST be on the list of top 5. I would think, though, that the actual birth is just part of it. The labor leading up to it is excrutiating, IME.

When I had my little boy I experienced 15 hours of labor, all without pain meds or epidural. I did it this way for personal reasons, but it was moot. It wasn't until I was ready to deliver that I was told I needed to have a Caesarian. Of course, they pumped me full of drugs for the C Section and gave me a spinal block. After the birth I had spinal headaches for 2 weeks. Ugh.

Also, though a bit off topic, my son was born a couple hours after the WTC was attacked.

(I apologize in advance if that was too much information. :rolleyes: )

Re: Re: Re: Ask the women
 

I don't know about kidney stones first hand, but my brother had one when he was 12, and based on his screams, he may as well have been having a baby. I can't imagine! :eek3:

Labor with my son was disturbingly painful. I remember the feeling of total panic, and of trying to get away from my own body because it hurt so bad (much worse than the discomfort they discussed in the childbirth class. Bastards.). I think fear played a huge roll in that though, as I was in a hospital and surrounded by people I didn't want anywhere near me.
Labor with my daughter was a breeze thogh. I was totally relaxed, knew I wouldn't be going to a hospital, had instructed the midwives to leave me alone in advance - and actually napped between contractions until transition. I experienced more pain a few months later when I tripped over a toy and sprained my big toe. Seriously.

I can really relate to this. I bitterly remembered the books I had read about childbirth calling it "pressure." Pressure, my ass! That was fucking PAIN. Funny, the only way I could deal with it was by removing myself completely from reality. Unfortunately, since I had a trainee nurse taking care of me, I had to snap back into reality everytime she wanted to fiddle with the damned monitoring belts around my belly. I almost slugged her a couple of times.

Oh yeah, and perth was with me through it all, so he helped, too. :)

Ok, guys (males) get ready for a good one...

When I was on the boat (submarine to you landlubbers and surface sailors) the guy standing watch on the fathometer wimpered like a little girl and fell over unconscious.

What had happened was that his seminal tubules got twisted and, when the temperature regulation kicked in, one of the testicles went up and the other didn't.

SPROING, wimper, thud.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I drink cranberry juice a lot.

As for me, I fell off a ladder straight down on my palm which dislocated my hand and shattered the ends of my two wrist bones (imagine hitting two peices of chalk with a hammer). After flopping around and wailing for a bit, I looked at my hand and seeing it on top of my wrist (hard to describe where it was) and out of sheer panic, pulled it out and reset it:

Alltogether now: ooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuucccccchhhhhhhhhh.

From Trauma: Life in the ER

A gentleman doing grounds keeping work. He is up a ladder trimming the top of a tree when he falls back wards on to the top of a recently trimmed evergreen. The tip of the evergreen strikes close enough to his rectum it tears and the trunk of the shrub/tree goes screaming up through his ass into the interior of his body breaking off branches as it goes. He comes to rest with his feet still off the ground. The EMT's who arrived had to use a chainsaw to cut off the tree at the base and he was transported avec shrub/tree trunk to the hospital.

When ever my roomate and I think we've had a bad day, we remind each other that it could be worse...

May I ask, Telefunken, if there's a context for your question on this subject? Or is it just idle curiosity?

Nasty childbirth story ... not my own.

I have not reproduced.

So, this friend of mine, who is an EMT and paramedic is giving birth.

She had already had two vaginal births, and expected a third.

No such luck.

The umbilical cord was wrapped around her daughter's neck, the doc wasn't able to get it unlooped, and the pressure of every contraction on the cord was causing drastic drops in fetal heart rate. The baby was way in distress.

The anesthesiologist was brought in, and my friend was given an epidural.

All the while she is watching the fetal monitor, knowing exactly what each skip and blip on the thing means.

The anesthesiologist relies on the patient's report that the epidural has taken effect.

My friend watched the fetal monitor closely. The signs were getting worse.

The OB kept asking "can I cut? can I cut?"

My friend said "Yes, cut."

The only person, other than my friend, who knew that she was NOT anthesthetized was the gas-passer ... and he didn't know it until he saw the monitors go crazy.

As soon as the baby was out and declared healthy, he knocked her out with an IV sedative, though.

Yeah, women can take a lot more pain, if they have to.

I propose a new method of pain measurement:
The number of Huertz (including Killohuertz) on the Ouchdamnitometer.
Blatantly ripped off from here.
More on topic: I once had a partial herniation of my esophagus over my diaphragm, which caused my diaphragm to spasm constantly. It felt like someone was stabbing me in the throat from the inside.
I've also seen some unpleasant things: in Whiskey 3 (Whiskey is a series of skate/snowboarding movies) one of the principles does a back flip off a movie marquee and breaks his thighbone. Superbly nasty. And in high school, one of our wrestlers got taken down onto his neck and snapped a couple of vertebrae. That's a sound I'll never forget. *shiver*

I've heard that a man can experience this level of pain by passing a large kidney stone.

When I was in college and drinking nothing but coffee and Coke, I got to experience this fun which started out as what I thought was a backache on waking up one morning. It soon escalated to pain so bad that I became nauseated and my blood pressure was something insanely high. The pain, I've read, comes mostly from the rear of the stone which is calcified and therefore has tiny sharp spines that cause tiny, painful cuts. I'll give my experience an "8" on a pain scale of 1-10 which turned to a -2 after they finally hooked me up to some magical juice in IV form.

I consider myself lucky -- my stone came and went without incident. One of my college friends once told me of her adventures in dehydration and kidney stones. Hers, she explained, didn't pass on its own and didn't break up when subjected to sonic waves. The result was a trip to surgery and the use of a catheter for nearly a month afterwards.

So you did not watch the Peter Jennings report on food and nutrition. The man from Ocean Spray was all but laughing - he and his wife would aquaint all their 'stuff' with what you should call a scam. He made his fortune by replacing Cranbury juice with corn syrup - then additives to make it taste like Cranbury juice. And he said this quite honestly since he really was not disclosing any breaking news. This is now common among many foods. Where is the maple syrup in maple syrup? Its also called corn syrup.

Is it Cranbury juice or sugar? You don't know. They make ingredient labels difficult to read - which is why legallized bribery is so important to the food industry.

Beechnut has also a long tainted history of doing this stuff. They were caught intentionally selling a chalk powder as baby formula in Africa. They intentionally replaced Apple Juice with surge water - that being done in a Brooklyn factory and exposed by, among others, Consumer Reports in using testimony of a Beechnut scientist. BTW Gerber has a long history of being responsible - not doing this stuff.

Is it cranbury juice or have they scammed you - legally. By using corn syrup (which has massive government subsidies), then the container costs more than the so called 'juice'. Government subsidies are major on the most unhealthy foods - not on foods you really need such as cranburies. Something like 50% of the cost of sugar is covered by government handouts.

It's extremely easy to tell. Cranberry juice will be labeled "CRANBERRY JUICE". All others will be labeled "drink", "cocktail", or some other name such as "Sunny Delight".

Similarly, maple syrup will be labeled "MAPLE SYRUP". It's illegal to sell anything but 100% maple syrup otherwise.

The catch is that you wouldn't want to drink straight cranberry juice, unless I'm mistaken.

Pain sucks
 

Skating 11 miles on a hip injury (including but possibly not limited to a labral tear and synovitis of the hip joint) is quite painful. Though I didn't realize quite how much pain I was in until I stopped to rest. Then had to skate 11 miles back. The return trip was no doubt a triumph of natural endorphins.

Not the most pain I've ever been in. That would have to be recovery from wisdom tooth extraction. The anaesthetic left me weak, cold, and nauseated, and the pain was incredible and had me screaming.

That would have to be recovery from wisdom tooth extraction. The anaesthetic left me weak, cold, and nauseated, and the pain was incredible and had me screaming.

Russotto, did they not put you out for this? I had all four of mine out (and they were impacted!) and the procedure isn't even in my memory.

Yeah, I was out for the actual procedure. The pain was during the recovery.

A couple years back I had a cavity drilled with no numbing agent whatsoever. The denist knew that I hate the numb feeling on my face, and since he said it would be pretty quick and may not even get to the nerve, I opted to try it without painkillers.

It hurt a little while he worked away in there, but was manageable. I felt when he hit the nerve, there was a twinge, and then a steady, dull pain. When he stopped drilling, and pulled the drill out, the air entered and made a nice, throbbing pain. Then, he sprayed the water/air in there to rinse the hole out.... that was a fascinating sensation, not unlike having a ten-penny nail tapped into the jawbone. I started laughing because I didn't know how else to react. Owie.

It was managable, but unpleasant. I think I'll just deal with the numb feeling in the future.

I had my wisdom teeth out, and a blocked gland removed from my inner lower lip on the same day. The anaesthetic ran out during the latter, and I toughed it out. :mad:
Afterwards, I had wounds in both the back and front of my mouth, and could only chew with my middle teeth. Plus, the packing they used in the tooth holes tasted so strongly of nutmeg that it flavored everything I ate for a week.

One-upmanship lives
 

I once had a 7mm kidney stone in my left hydroureter (the tube from the kidney to the bladder). It didn't pass on it's own. I tried to piss it out for FOUR HOURS first, before seeking professional help. The Doctor diagnosed a kidney stone (no shit Sherlock) and sent me to the ER.

The ER wanted to do another diagnosis. Tried to get me to provide a urine sample (yeah, right). Diddled around for two more hours until they finally got the message that I couldn't pass any more urine. Then they tried to TAKE the sample with a catheter. No soap, I had eliminated all but two measly drops. Then they tried a sonogram and saw the stone. Sonic waves didn't break it up either.

They sent me to a urologist. BTW, no pain meds YET!!!

HE diagnosed a kidney stone (nice that everyone agrees on MY initial diagnosis, now how about DOING SOMETHING!!!!!)

The urologist gave me a shot of Demerol (not enough, IMO) and went in after it with a flexible something or other. Folks, lemme tell ya, if you ever have a urologist tell you he's going to give you a "little something", he means it. If said urologist then tells you that this might hurt "a little", prepare to gouge your eyes out, to take your mind off the pain in your hydraulics.

He managed to break it up and let me pass it out myself.

I'm convinced that there was a conspiracy that day to make me suffer as much as (in)humanly possible.

Brian

Damn Brian, that made my skin crawl. Gah.

When my son was about 2.5 he came to me frantic one after noon, waving his hands around and screaming "thatswhyIputastacioupmynose" over and over. Freaked me right out, but I calmed him down and tried to look up his nose and see the pistacio. I couldn't.
So, I called jim at work and had him come home and take us to the ER. Once there, they tried about a half dozen times in various ways to get the nut out my kids nose, to no avail. So then they try this angioplasty thing.... a long tube with a balloon on the end. The plan was to stick it up his nose past the nut, inflate it, and drag it back down. They get it up there, inflate it, and POP it inside my childs nose. Unreal. So they need a new one to try again but don't have any, have to go somewhere else in the hospital to find one. While we're waiting, doc gets antsy and decides he'd just try to do it manually with really sharp pointy hemostats. Fuck that doc! We stopped him. Eventually then did come up with a new balloon thing, and did manage to extract the object acording to plan. Turns out it was actually a large pistacio shell, not the nut.
The boy handled all of this like a champ I must say. Much better than I would have.

Every person has a different pain barrier.

for me it is very low.

very very low.

think.. paper cut.

i have ALWAYS been like this, even as a baby.

Some Examples:

On a premilinary date with my last long term BF, we went to a really nice restaurant, ordered great food, great wine spent a fortune and the FIRST bite i took.. i bit the side of my mouth. i bet some people do this quite a bit. but not me, i felt like i needed morphine and once i tasted the blood, i passed out in my garlic prawn entree and Tim had to caryy me out to the car (where i came to) and take me to the hospital, where i was given drugs for "shock".

after working in my 1st job a few months i was filing. i cut my finger on a piece of paper enough to bleed. the room span, my finger felt like it was on fire and i tell you no lie, my brain goes crazy and makes me think i'm about to die. one of my fellow staff found me semi concious on the floor and drgged me to the tea room for a cold wash cloth. i had the rest of the day off. shamefull but true.

there are a thousand more just like this.

my BF however once while motorcycling cross country caught his arm on a tree branch, severed 2 tendons and needing 25 stitches got back on his motorbike and rode himself to a hospital (1.5hours away) without even caring. this guy once lost his knee cap on a superman motocross jump and didnt even notice till he was walking in the gate at home! ... pull the hairs under his thighs though and he'll scream like a girl so go fiure. :eek:

Which brings up an important point. The same injury, to the same person, at two seperate times, can have different levels of pain.

Adreneline (or something like it) acts as a painkiller in moments of excitement (fight or flight, or the other f)

Heck Wolf. I've just read the whole thread but I felt the pain your friend 'undertook'. Poignant and damn heroic.

No, OC wins.

give some meaning to this sad inhumanity

OC definitely wins, but I'll tell my tale anyway.

We were butchering a pig and were hauling hot water to scald the skin. I accidently tipped the kettle when I was pulling a bucket of water out. The water went down my boot and removed quite a lot of skin. ouch. That cost me an entire wrestling season.

I understand what he did although not why. The thing that I really don't understand is why he ever woke up again?:confused:

Well somehow on sheer pain i think Silent wins. Did the guy survive??

For sheer what-the-fuck factor, i'm saying OnyxCougar.

Amazingly, the guy suffered only (only being relative here) a torn sphincter and ruptured colon.

They's showed ther surgery as they cut him open from crotch to sternum and removed the trunk in 6" lengths. They finally reached the end about 3" from the guys heart.
Luckily, it did not tear the membrane between his chest and abdominal cavity or rupture any internal organs.
Unluckily, he was filled with sawdust and twigs and had to live with an open abdomen for two weeks while they constantly flushed out the resulting infections. Plus he had to shit into a bag attached to his stomach until his colan and rectum healed.

OC, I assume this guy is somewhere far away now?

Because at the time I wasn't ready to stand up for myself. I had such a low self esteem (and I was so friggin stupid at the time) that I believed him when he said this was normal for "girls like me" and that I was so ugly and fat that I would never get anyone else. He was good at the mind games.

He dumped me for a co-worker. I just went to California to live with my sister. I think sometimes, had I killed him (which would have been completely justifiable at the time), he wouldn't have killed Steven. So yeah, I carry that around, too.

Quote:

OC, I assume this guy is somewhere far away now?

Much of the story.

Fuck.

Dear God.

OC has raised in a sense another point here too, emotional pain is even harder to quantify. Wounds heal, sometimes leaving scars and other fun oddities but so does emotional scarring and it's often far more debilitating.

Jesus, mary and joseph a bloody tree up the arse is something I had never really considered until this thread, thankyou cellar for enlightening me.

Tweet! Time out. Invalid guilt on defence. Collect warm bath and breakfast in bed penalty. The future is unwritten, so don't make yourself nuts about hindsight and what might have been.:angel:

Sorry about starting the post. Been in a funk for the past three days.

My worst pain was a kick with cowboy-boots in my genitals when i was 12 or so. I was peeing blood for to days...

Looks like some of you weren't familiar with OC's story. Now, having read it, I think you can understand a small part of the reason some of us (me, for damn sure) hold her in such high esteem. To have endured the inhumane and senseless things which she has had forced upon her and hers, and to have come out of it all so damn warm, upbeat and just plain *sharp* is a testament to the human spirit.

The shit she's related about her life curls my hair. For the umpteenth time, my hat is off to you, ma'am.

I hadn't heard the knife rape part, though, I don't think, and I've gotta know, since you brought it up...blade or handle? And how in *hell* did you explain the injuries at the hospital without this sick fuck ending up in jail?

I said it before, I'lll say it again. Fuck.

An ex of mine used to bring this up all the time and it strikes me now: What do 90% of the people who commit attrocities like this against others have in common? They're men.

I apologize for my sex. I know women can be every bit as nasty, but something like that just casts a wide net.

From what I understand, it keeps down the bacteria in your bladder and kidneys, but I could be wrong.

As far as pain, my threshold sucks big time. Having diabetic neuropathy doesn't help either (it makes one sensitive to heat, cold and pain). :( I totally despise needles of any kind, and the little sharp pains of the neuropathy drive me nuts!

Speaking as a Jewish male, I think a story like that can top the guilt meter. If anything, it can pretty much guarantee that she won't get stuck in a crappy nursing home.

i broke my pinky when i was 13

AWWWWWWWW... LG THATS TERRIBLE!

are you ok now though?

*cringing!!!!* Ugh, I can't imagine breaking any bones. I'd cry enough tears to fill the Grand Canyon if I did!!! :eek: :eek: :worried:

well, it's still a little sore when the weather changes....sniff sniff


-LumberGym

I remenber back in wood class at school we were given the lecture of safety on this sanding machine.

we were given a pamphlet where this girl's long hair was caught in the sander and the machine scalped her.

now THAT would be painful