Chronic cluster headache sufferer here. To sum up, I’ve been: Shot, stabbed, shot a second time, broke 7 bones in various appendages, hit with a baseball bat, hit by a car, multiple teeth issues, and migraine headaches, sprinkled for fun.
Basically, I took steve-o’s motto and ran with it (your body is a ride, ride it until the wheels fall off).
None of this comes close to the lightest cluster headache I’ve had. The sheer panic, the knowledge of what’s about to happen, the inescapable amount of pain I know is coming… Fuck CH.
Is there a connection between your lifestyle and the CH? Did one of these cause the other, in whichever sequence?
As far as lifestyle, no, there’s no connection. There are several common triggers of headaches, and trust me, I avoid any and all of them.
I have, and I tried one time, about 8 years ago. Efficacy wasn’t what I expected, it took me out of my cycle for about a week. But then I was back on the pain train. Not sure how well it would work for me to be in jail (if I get caught with shrooms) + trying to find a way to pace around in a holding cell. Being such a niche disease I kinda have to hope for pharmaceutical companies to develop proper legal treatment “some day”
What do you do to get put through all that?
I just played a lot of sports, some of them extreme (downhill biking). Also, I was born and raised in a truly poor region. And I was just very dumb and tough. And tremendously irresponsible
Top 3:
- Shingles in my eye / face / scalp.
- Appendix ruptured while I was on the toilet.
- Kidney stones (multiple times)
I am picturing this all happening simultaneously
The circumcision I had in my mid teens. Well, not the circumcision itself, but the erections I would get in the morning which would rip the stitches out of my cock, bleeding until I masturbated with anesthetic gel to orgasm just to stop the pain.
Jesus a chastity cage would’ve actually probably helped you
Losing people I loved.
Spinal Stenosis. Woke up one day feeling like my back was not only broken, but that I could feel the broken ends grinding against each other.
The most intense physical pain I ever felt was waking up after impacted wisdom tooth removal. One side of my face was appr. 3x the size of the other.
The second worse was last week; waking up from anaesthesia after having all 22 remaining teeth removed. It’s slightly better now and I’d put it at 8,5/10.
The worst pain I’ve ever felt was mental though. It started almost three decades ago when my father killed himself when I was a teen. To be honest, I never recovered. I’m a shell of a human being begging for release (death) daily while being too much of a coward to actually do it.
Oh, and after returning to work with 0 teeth, my coworkers now amuse themselves by making me say tongue breakers. I already knew they didn’t like or respect me before all this, but this really drove a dagger into my heart because it was someone I never would have expected it from. I’ve been at this company for 10 years and in this team for 5 and I’m fighting a daily urge to follow in my father’s footsteps.
He really had the right idea. I was pissed at him back then but I have more understanding and respect for his decision every single day.
That’s fucking awful. I genuinely hope you find yourself surrounded with people who love and respect you. I know life can be utter shit, but I’m glad you’re still here.
Perhaps you can get a gofundme for dentures or implants in the future? It’d improve your quality of life and is worth pursuing if you feel like it’s something you have energy for.
Toe-to-heel second-degree burns on both feet.
I was 10, and stood up in sand that had been heated by a portable barbecue. The irony is, one of the adults had moved the grill so nobody would step in the coals. It had sunk its little wire legs and had been sitting directly on the sand for a couple of hours.
I stood up, screamed and ran for the ocean. About halfway there, the blisters puffed up and I had to crawl until someone figured out what was happening and hauled me into the water.
- Full bowel blockage
- Ruptured appendix
With number 1, by the time I got to the hospital my shirt was wringing wet with sweat, vomit, tears, and blood. I took it off and told the ambulance driver to just chuck it in the bin lol
Omg. Bowel pain is the most excruciating type of pain I’ve felt, it’s about as strong as breaking a bone. I’m sorry you been through that!
I’ve never had that, but I have IBS-C and can see exactly how the pain could get that bad. Please tell me they corrected whatever caused it.
A spinal tap. It felt like a toothache in my entire body while a demon choir sang in a high pitched whine.
When I was 11 there was a chance that I had contracted meningitis.
Physical pain? Migraine.
I have had kidney stone, childbirth, and broken bones, also once a torn Achilles tendon, all hurt bad, none were as bad as a bad migraine. That is the worst pain I’ve survived. So bad I got hallucinations, crying and puking up anything even a bare sip of water, nothing but pain exists. Migraine is by far the worst physical pain I have felt.
I’ve tried to explain the pain to my partner. She doesn’t understand that pain that intense makes you nausea. I also can’t remember simple things like what month it is, my dogs name, her name, like it’s crazy because your in so much pain. Luckily that have been significantly less frequent since I’ve moved to a different area of the country and I’ve gotten better at preventing them by catching them early.
Mine got less intense after menopause and the worst ones were when I was on birth control pills, though I didn’t know that until I stopped taking them. I thought menopause might end them (as mine were primarily hormonal), it didn’t but menopause plus continuous daily low dose MHT has come close, but less intense has been interesting - before I didn’t understand when the doctor would ask how bad is the pain, I would say Migraine, like what is the question? There is no scale, it is a migraine. But post menopause they do vary.
I learned that one of the things a migraine does is fuck with serotonin receptors so you experience the pain without any accompanying euphoria, that is part of why it hits different from other pain but the way I’ve described it to people is imagine the worst hangover you’ve had then multiply the headache part of it by about 10x.
A pain so great that your fingers stop working and your limbs go numb and everything in your body triggers a throb but you can’t stop crying because it hurts too bad.
Uuuuuuugggggghhhhhh. I’m really happy that you’re able to have them significantly less frequently. That’s a huge boon. Hopefully you can be migraine free moving forward!
Childbirth, my hand was killing me.
I heard wild stories from paramedic about people with chronic pain.
It is not uncommon to get calls from relatives like: " Our grandma fell, broke leg, and didn’t want to bother you. She is on other side of city and we can’t get to her."
And it turns out that it is open fracture but because she is in pain all the time, she didn’t think it is big deal.
I’ve had so many accidents with some that needed surgery and nothing beats getting my finger stuck in the car door of an Uber. I’m just glad the driver didn’t move until after I freed my finger.
For me personally it was getting some of my arms skin getting shoved between two desks that I had my arm resting on after someone slammed them together tightly during high school
Left a red line that took a while to go away
Edit I just remembered something wven more painful then this
I’m going to copy paste my comment reply to someone else below
"You reminded me of the one time I was visiting my uncle as a child and I ended up puking in the car because the sun was hitting the back of my head in summer, and this was Australian summer where It can get hot and humid
I don’t know if it was a migraine but it was painful as fuck"
There was also the time i got rope burn from tug o war in primary school but the car headache that was potentially a migraine was more painful
Gout in my knee. Gout anywhere has been bad. The knee was the worst.
No gout attacks in years though, keeping it under control.
I had it on the ball of my foot. Like being stabbed with a thousand lava hot needles.
The first gout attack I had was the worst. I had been limping for two weeks thinking it would just go away, but it got steadily worse until it became unbearable and I went to the doctor. The diagnosis was almost instantaneous. She looked at my foot and went “Yep, gout”. It got worse for another couple of days until it slowly started ebbing away. I was basically a cripple for at least two weeks though.
I have it better under control now, but it still plays up sometimes. Gout sucks, but also there are worse things I suppose.
