Do you have a high tolerance for pain?

I do, and it has caused me a lot of trouble. Often “toughing it out” just causes damage to increase. I lost a kidney because of a high pain threshold, and my cancer developed to an advanced stage because of it.

I get fussed at by nurses when I have surgical procedures for not using my morphine. I’d rather just tough it out.

I have to admit, I got a bit of mean-spirited pleasure while I read my book while getting a half sleeve tattoo while the guy in the booth next to me whine, groaned, and cried. He was so dramatic, I figured he was getting his dick done. But when I peeked, nope. Just a wimp.

Yes, I do. Funny because a friend just mentioned this the other day. She has some health issues and is super body in tune and always sensing something about her body. I’m more the cerebral type and live in my head most of the time.

I was talking about the personality differences between sensors and intuitives, the body vs. head types and she was cracking up because she has noticed, on several occasions, that I am just doing my thing, moving along, no mention of any issues and then I just casually say ” I think I’m going to go to the ER.” lol
This happened twice this year for a gallbladder issue and a bladder/kidney infection.

I am one of those that could be on deaths door and you;d never know it by the tone in my voice or my activity level and I never lose my appetite short of a stomach flu. It takes a lot for me to go off my feed. haha

I went around for 2 months with off the charts pain because the f’n radiologist missed that I had a herniated disc. I finally got a 3rd opinion from an orthopedic surgeon who saw it right away on my films and said FUCK! They missed it! Right there T10 T11! Never heard a Dr. Swear before. He gave me a prescription for a steroid shot which I did not use because I had started taking a yoga class that helped me heal.

4 months later I re-injured that disc and was once again on the ground in even worse pain. I made it through 7 hours of agony and finally went to the hospital pain clinic to get the shot. It took me over an hour to get my clothes off and then up on the table as I told the Dr and nurse do not touch me! This doctor was head of the pain clinic and told me he had never seen anyone in that much pain before. Yay me!

I am impressed @Cruiser! In my experience men don’t tolerate pain the way women do. Rick and I once went together to get blood drawn. Some sort of health awareness thing for Rick’s work. The gal who took the blood was the best ever. I barely felt it. I watched the procedure curiously, like I always do, while Rick turned green! I asked the nurse if men cry about it more than women. She said “You wouldn’t believe! I had one man who actually fainted.”

Depends on what the pain is. Bodily injury like burns, cuts, banged knees, shins, head etc… no big deal. Teeth, sensitive organs like eyes or nuts then not so much.

I think so. I wasn’t all that aware of it until the kidney stone, and some docs commented on it.

Just FYI, @Dutchess_III, vasovagal syncope is an actual, involuntary thing. Just a little factoid.

Oh, I’m sure it is. And I’m sure it’s completely involuntary @canidmajor. I just kind of wonder how it survived to be passed on. I mean, an ancestor, sittin’ in a tree, sees a lion RIP open a zebra, and Ancestor faints dead away and falls 30 feet to the ground. Smash. Dead.

@Dutchess_III “In my experience men don’t tolerate pain the way women do.” What a bunch of horseshit.

That’s been my experience, @Espiritus_Corvus. I didn’t say it was a fact.

@Dutchess_III: From the article: “If you’re a caveman and another caveman comes over and cuts your arm off, the sight of blood or injury may cause you to faint. So when you’re laying there on the ground, you’ll look like you’re dead to the other cavemen and he won’t cut your head off,” explains Dr. Fred Jaeger, medical director of the Syncope Center at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.

The drop in heart rate and blood pressure, it is believed, is beneficial in slowing bleeding if one is passed out from blood loss.

It’s unknown whether one’s susceptibility to passing out at the sight of blood is due to genetics, hormone levels, or some other trigger.

So it seems that there may be some benefits to this, whether or not it’s genetic.

@Dutchess_III “In my experience men don’t tolerate pain the way women do.”

Really? How do you figure? Been the opposite experience for me. I have seen it as a highly individual thing and not gender specific at all.

Yes. I went nine days with a burst appendix. I felt it go and thought it was a reaction to a five hour energy drink. I took hot baths several times a day and went to the ER when I couldn’t tolerate it any longer. I was in surgery within an hour or do. There was so much poison Inside me that they had cut me from navel to pubis and left the incision open. I had sponges and a suction thing. After I went home a nurse came three times a week to change the sponges. I mean it hurt but on TV a burst appy makes the person scream and drop to their knees. That didn’t happen to me so I never even considered that it might be my appendix. A couple months after I was all healed up, I had similar symptoms. Waited again. Had a blood clot in the mesoenteric descending vein. The same doc saw me and told me to stop being a hero, but it wasn’t that. It was more that it was uncomfortable, and gradually got worse. Like adding hot water a bit at a time or something.

I’ve dealt with a lot of extreme pain successfully (passing a large kidney stone is the 4th most painful thing that has ever happened to me) without excessive complaint but I don’t know if that means that my pain tolerance is high. I won’t play the hero and refuse pain meds that are offered to me when I need them. I don’t see the point in torturing myself that way.

I’m a huge baby about chronic pain. I can deal with something intense but short like passing a kidney stone, but even a small amount of constant pain wears me down really fast.

There is a pervasive attitude in our society that “toughing it out” or ignoring pain is a good thing, and something to be proud of. Yeah, nobody likes whiny people, but the idea that not even seeking the source, or to alleviate the pain for the sake of demonstrating toughness is basically silly. I don’t know if my high pain threshold is physiological or conditioned, because in my family, only my mother was allowed to be in pain. She quickly stopped any expression of discomfort from anyone else with snide disdain, so we learned early to be stoic.

@canidmajor well, that’s interesting. But fainting also leaves one extremely vulnerable. So I just find it interesting. And if the dude cut your arm off and you live in a cave, 50,000 years from the nearest ER, you’re bleeding out, period!

I cracked some ribs and didn’t even realise until it showed up in an X-Ray five years later. On the other hand toothache is a hellish pain that I can’t stand.

I don’t really have a frame of reference, so…not sure. I don’t feel much pain. For example, I rarely get headaches or menstrual cramps. On the other hand, I need way more anaesthetic than what seems to be the norm when I’m having wisdom teeth extracted. Also, at the moment, one of my toes is killing me.

I never get headaches either. Does that mean I’m weird?

@ Dutchess lll I never get headaches either, unless it is a sinus/allergy face ache thing.

I’d also add that, for me, it is similar to @Jak It is not so much that I ignore what’s going on but not being a paranoid type I just think to myself, “well, I’ll see how if feel in a few days.” Actually right now, this week I am having some bowel issues and am going to make an appointment if things don’t clear up in another week or so. Watch I have colon cancer, but hey….I’m not one to jump the gun and run to the doctor for every little thing.
Infact, my number one preference for being diagnosed with a terminal condition is to just go to the doc one day not feeling well and be told I have 2 weeks to live. lol

No invasive procedures or chemo or anything like that for me. Just give me pain killers and let me go home a enjoy the time I have left.

Depends on the kind of pain. I can get a tattoo on my ribs with little complaint. When I break bones, I can deal with it. Small burns or muscle pain is tolerable. What I cannot take is stomach pain. I turn into a weepy mess if I have stomach pain. And tooth pain. An infected tooth is the most pain I have ever felt.

@tinyfaery had a good point. I had forgotten. I broke a wisdom tooth in my early 20’s and the pulp was exposed. Two massive spikes of pain, one into my eye and one towards my ear. Emergency extraction and I never even noticed the needle. Hoo boy! That was brutal! Sphincter clench just thinking about it.

@Dutchess_III You are so right. My 82 yr old mom who lives by herself fainted in walmart yesterday and thankfully she was there and not at home. A lady behind her saw her go down and hit her head. She woke up in the ambulance so she was out for a while and probably from a concussion. Waiting for MRI and Drs opinion.

How scary, for you and especially for her.

Yes. The “pain scale” is meaningless to me. The last time I encountered it was the day I called a large gallstone stuck in my bile duct a “six”. That’s a really good way to get ER staff to think you’re faking, by the way.

I had my gallbladder removed on Friday afternoon. Went back to work on Monday. Threw out the percocet they prescribed because it made it hard to focus on my computer.

I mean, if that stone merited a ten, then the hemorrhage after having my son was, like, a twenty-five. The memory of that pain overshadows the entire birth story for me. I lost four or five hours from my memory.

I have several broken teeth. Exposed tooth nerves hurt a little for a few days, but it always stops. I just avoid ice for a while. I mean, it hurts, but I can deal with it. Not like I have much of a choice otherwise.

@Seek Oh man, you had a gallstone! Ugh!
I just had some weird flare up of something. No stones but yep, that pain was pretty bad but I think I said it was like a 4. haha

WTF…who comes up with these stupid number scales anyway? Of course everyone wants to be stoic but shit…the worst pain I ever had, worse than giving birth was severe kidney infection. That was baaad, turned out I had a blocked ureter. :-/

I had them about once every three or four months for three years, until I finally landed a job with health insurance and could get someone to ultrasound the damned thing.

I would go on gallbladder diets – absolutely no fat for weeks – then drink about half a cup of olive oil to flush it out.

I am a massive wimp.. If I have a odd itch I am all “Scabies” and go to the ER.

However, back in my day I would go as fast as I could on my skateboard and fling myself off a set of 15 stairs knowing I would get hurt pretty bad. Around 28 I hung up the skateboard. I miss it dearly but my body won’t allow it.

Childbirth and gall stones. Gall stones were worse. Wisdom teeth empacted out on a Friday back at work on Monday. I pass the small gall stones and have. They aren’t big enough to block the duct so no surgery for me but much more painful than childbirth and I had a stargazer.

My tolerance for pain is pretty high, especially if it’s someone else’s pain.

@Yetanotheruser Hahahaha!

I have a high tolerance for intense pain when I know it’s coming (and that it will pass). I’ve had three kids with no epidurals, and no regrets. Had a hysterectomy and wanted to leave the hospital the same day. I get my teeth worked on without Novocaine, too. But sudden pain, like a pop of bacon grease on my arm? Then I’m a huge baby. Any kind of burn just about kills me.

Chronic pain (which I’ve dealt with for nearly 20 years now) is a whole other situation. How well I deal with that depends on the day.

When I was 4 I had a dislocated elbow, and I refused to have any medication to relieve pain, so they clicked my elbow back into place with no pain relief. There was a loud shriek… I was pretty tough though, right?

My son’s father has a very low pain tolerance. He also can’t stand anything that might tickle him. I wonder if the sensitivity is related. He won’t work or anything if he has a back ache. He gets opiate pain killers and washes them down with alcohol and lays down and sleeps for days. He has to be put out of the dentist.

^^^ Sounds more like a drug and alcohol addiction. The “pain” is just an excuse. But, I don’t know, because I don’t know him.

Yes. I also had natural childbirth with no meds. It was severe pain but I’ve also had two knee replacements and getting over the second one at least rose to the level of childbirth pain.