Tell me about a time you were in physical pain and kept going on?

Most of last year. I twisted my knee pretty badly – pulled several muscles, for a while the doc thought the meniscus was damaged, but eventually decided it wasn’t.

Anyway, I walked in pain, with and without cane, for the better part of the year. Eventually the pain and inflammation dissipated, but I do get the occasional twinge.

I had to still go to work, still be involved with family stuff, still be walking and driving as much as usual. It wasn’t fun. But – it ended after a while.

I was in high school track and field and in a cross country 3k run I was knocked into a rose hip bush and I got hurt. I walked the rest of the way and almost everyone was gone.

My first day back to work after having a hysterectomy my office was having a luncheon at a restaurant. I had a co-worker with me and I had to stop for gas. I was hit by a car and flew up in the air and hit the ground. I had no more time off so I had to suck it up and continue with work. My insides felt like they were on fire! I think I might have ripped something inside because it hurt so bad.

@chyna Are you fucking nuts?

@Adirondackwannabe I had to work!

Every day. haha
I live on a 10 acre ranch property and have lived on rural properties with animals for years now. I am a former interior designer/home stager and after years of dragging around furniture and caring for animals, riding. saddling, shoveling after horses, geese, gardens, housework, dishes, yard work, at almost 56 now I am in chronic pain all the time in one capacity or another. I deal with it by using Advil and wine, not together and swearing a lot.lol
Middle age breakdown. haha

Right now I have 2 chronically effed up fingers on my left hand, tendonitis in my thumbs and wrists, a bad left shoulder with a pin in it from a horse wreck in my wild youth, a wonky ankle and a crickity neck. I soldier on. You just do what you need to do and block out the pain. Being a lefty it is like the entire left side of my body is failing from over use. I need a half of body transplant.

I won’t bore you with details, but exactly 2 years ago this month, I hurt my back and have been unable to lie down. Yes, that means that I have to sleep sitting up…on the couch. Also, this was 8 months into a rare type of sleep apnea had taken over my life and I was just not sleeping.

Night after night, I would just be awake all night in terrible pain and unable to sleep. When it was time to “wake up” to go to work, I would ask myself how I would be able to get through the day. But what I started doing was saying that I didn’t need to get through the day. I just needed to get through this moment. And now, this moment. And this. Then, when the day was over, I would say, “Hah, I actually did it.”. And it went on like this – and still does many days. But it gets easier, because I realize that I’m capable of far more than I had realized.

Your pain is temporary, and you don’t need to think about how you’re going to be able to pull off spending a whole day at your internship. Just wake up and focus on doing what you are doing at that moment. Then the next. And the next.

Also, use this opportunity to learn about your relationship with pain. Listen closely to the self-talk involved around the experience of pain. Are you catastrophizing and ruminating about regret or anger related to the cause of the pain? Is your mind playing “I wish I didn’t have this pain” on repeat all day? You might try taking a few moments to breathe, slow down, and turn your attention to your pain. Sink down into that pain, and try to focus on the sensation itself. You might notice that when you try to pin it down and focus on exactly what it feels like, that it becomes a bit elusive. It’s often not that we feel pain 100% of the time. Rather, like much of our conscious experience, memory, and vision, sensations register as pain and they come and go. But our mind fills in the gaps in these fluid sensations and creates a model of “pain” that is constant and unchanging.

@chyna Jesus Christ, you were nuts. Sometimes we have to take care of ourselves. I’ve been hit by a truck. It’s not fun.

5 years ago I had intermittent testicular torsion – most painful thing I’ve ever been through. 5 yeas ago I had a delivery job at UPS, and my torsion was at it’s worst when I was out delivering. I should have gone to the hospital, but I finished the rest of my 8 hour shift in excruciating pain.

As a martial artist, this happens on a minor scale all the time. I’ve kept fighting after copping elbows to the head, kicks to the liver, and being rattled by awkward throws. I train to ignore pain, because otherwise one painful blow could end a fight prematurely. However since I am in the medical field, I also know when to bow out, such as when I get dazed by a solid strike or am at risk of injury.

Perhaps the best example though was a few months back when I mishandled my equipment at work, and tore off half a fingernail. I was instructing a student at the time, and was in front of a child’s family and a nurse. I managed to control the pain well enough that not a single person noticed (I quickly put gloves on to contain and hide the blood), and I dealt with it quietly a few minutes later when I got a chance.

Had a vasectomy and went back to work the next morning. Felt like I’d been et by a wolf and shit over a cliff but moved slowly, sat down carefully and just kept my legs wide apart when seated and somehow made it through (‘course, the painkillers didn’t hurt). But you know, looking back on it now, it was stupid. I should have just stayed home and enjoyed the meds.

More than once.

For years, from my mid to late 20’s, I had chronic GYN related pain. Some days I cried in my office I was uncomfortable and so sad from it.

After a bad golf cart accident, black and blue all over, having some vertigo, and recovered from a small lung tear after a few days in the hospital, I travelled eight hours to get home. Halfway I had to go to urgent care, because the hospital had not sewn a deep cut up that should have been stitched. We spent the night in that town, and the next day finished the last 4 hours. I couldn’t even go to the bathroom myself, because of the vertigo and discomfort I was in. My husband was literally coming into the women’s room during the trip home to help me walk. If I had said I wanted to spend a few more days in a hotel before the long drive home my husband would have obliged, but I toughed it out instead. I wanted to be home, so it’s not like he was pushing me to make the trip, but I also felt badly that he was missing work, the money, all of it. Really bad time. He had to miss going into work a few or several days anyway (I actually am not sure how many, it’s a blur for me) because I could not be alone, but he worked a little from the house. After that he went to work a few hours in the middle of the day. Once my vertigo seemed to be less of a concern (although it persisted for over a year in certain positions) I tried to help where I could in the house in terms of cooking, even though I was still in a lot of pain. Neighbors brought food sometimes, which helped out tremendously. We hired a cleaning woman to help clean eventually. I was lucky not to be working at the time. Probably, if I had been, I would have gone back to work while still in quite a bit of discomfort if it was an office job. Although, I didn’t drive for 6 weeks after the accident, so I’m not sure how that would have played out. Still to this day I have necks and shoulder pain daily from that accident, which happened three years ago.

I had a back injury that lasted about 9 months. Back brace, only allowed to wear flat shoes, sometimes the pain was so bad I would sit in my office hunched over, basically immobilized at times from the pain. I still worked every day. I was working retail, which you wind up standing a lot, and all too often lifting what you shouldn’t, and you have to smile in front of the public. It was really miserable.

Today I am going to go to work sick. Just a cold, I have done that more than once in my life. Yesterday I felt it coming on and asked my boss if he wanted me to stay home (I work in his house where he has 4 young children, although yesterday they were gone for the day) and he looked at me like I was trying to get out of work (it is true I’d like to work less, but I am the only one who does my work, so if I miss work today, I am the one who has to make it up). Alrighty then, I’ll go to work. If I were him I would tell me to stay home during the most contagious time.

When I was a young teen I used to go to school after having my braces tightened. Sore mouth, could barely eat, there I was still sitting in class.

What city do you live in?

Now.

I suffered my first knee injury at 7 years old, another one at 8, and two more at 12. Then I played sports all through high school and college. There isn’t a day they don’t hurt, sometimes pretty bad.

I was just thinking about my husband’s former boss. I’m not sure if you will count this answer, but the guy has something wrong with his heart and the last two years has fine very down hill waiting for a heart transplant. He can barely walk across the street he is so winded. Just sitting he is winded. He still goes to work every day. He could easily get out if work on disability. He’s dying basically, unless the transplant comes through. Great guy, he’s in his 50’s.

I had a root canal that the dentist kept screwing up. Every time he’d redrill that molar The swelling increased. The last time he wanted to redrill agiain, but I said NO because I couldn’t swallow the last time he did it, and the swelling would have likely killed me. (Yeah, I know. Never go with an amature for a dentist!). The pain? It was beyond excruciating, and each time it slowly receded until the swelling had gone down. Then he’d redrill it again, with the hope of eventually putting a permanent cap on it. Eventually I had it pulled.

I did all my normal stuff that I’d do every day, but I cried a lot, and didn’t sleep much.

@hug_of_war My heart is going out to you. What do you mean you “have no friends”? That is the saddest damn thing I’ve ever heard. And what is it with you getting hit by so many cars? Are the drivers your former friends?

But yeah, I’ve had to work through pain. After an emergency ectopic pregnancy surgery on Saturday, I was discharged on Sunday, and had my home daycare open on Monday. (I too HAD to work.) It sucked, and I got worse before I got better, but I kept working. The kids were marvelous, though. They made me sit in a chair and made breakfast for every one (toast and milk, which broke a few USDA food guidelines that I had to follow!) and brought me toast and milk on a tray.

There was a time at around age 16 when I flew off my bike, injured my elbow, and cut myself in a number of places. My shirt was stained with blood in several spots by the time I made it home, but despite being in some of the worst pain I’ve ever felt, I had to walk my bike home for about half a mile. That was a testament to my ability to be a “trooper” in certain circumstances ;)

@DominicY I did the same damn thing! A kid pushed me off my bike, and then fender cut the top of my ankle so deep you could see the tendon moving. (When I got home Mom immediately put me up on the bathroom counter and put my foot in water. I was watching the tendon move going, “Cool!!!”)
Anyway, I walked my bike home. A neighbor came by, asked if I wanted a ride, and I said “No.”
What was going through our minds? Were we just tough, or stupid?

Haha…me too, I spun out on my bike in an algae slimed gutter on a turn once when I was about 10 years old. I went down so hard, totally destroyed my knees, gashed my elbow, was a bloody mess and had to limp home 6 blocks to get medical aide from my momy. lolm

Oh, I miss those bloody, gashy days!

My case was kind of stupid. We lived on a dirt cul de sac, and the wreck happened at the other end of the cul de sac…about 2 blocks from home! But when the neighbor asked me if I wanted a ride, I think I was in shock because what went through my head was, “What are we going to do with my bike?” Well, we could have just shoved it into the neighbor’s yard. Or, my sister, who was with me could have walked it the few yards home.
I was the oldest and I just worried about stupid shit.