The treatment wasn’t even mine. When I was a kid, we had an indoor-outdoor cat that ended up with a bunch of giant, oozing, odorous, pulsating sores on its neck. Turns out there’s a fly that lays its eggs in animals’ wounds and once the maggots hatch they burrow into the skin. Really gross. It was traumatic watching the vet pry and pull the maggots out of their flesh burrows.

I hate anything that requires a local anesthetic because of how often that stuff fails to work for me. Typically after several shots of local anesthetic, the doctor will say “it’s not safe to give you anymore”, either we stop here or we keep going but it’s going to hurt and there’s nothing they can do about it.

I’ve had my whole arm numbed up except the spot that needed to be stitched, granted the needles they used to inject the anesthetic were more painful than the needle they used to do the stitching. Another time I had to endure the pain of getting a wound cut open and the doctor digging around inside it with a scalpel trying to fish out debris or something.

Wisdom teeth. Sure I was knocked out but after the sedatives and stuff wore off I had nothing for the pain. They said I could return to work the next day, is that supposed to be a joke?

I had a couple of chest tubes removed that had been in for around ten days without any sedation or numbing. They had to give them a twist to break them free. I didn’t care, two weeks in the hospital and all I wanted was to get out of there.

Not the worst medical treatment perhaps, but horrible when I found out how many women this happens to. Both the insertion and removal of my iud were done with no painkillers except the ibuprofen I decided to take an hour before my appointment. Going in, I nearly fainted from the pain. The gyno casually laid me down for a while and told me it happens every other day that someone faints. I was in bed for a day afterwards from terrible pain and cramps. Then, for the removal, the wire has disappeared so she had to go “find it”. I was crying and could barely hold my legs still. Why the hell this procedure is still done without warning and options for better pain relief I have no idea.

The doctor who circumcised me did a total hack job at it: cut way too much off, stitched it back together asymmetrically, and, as I’ve just learned in the last few years, probably severed the dorsal nerve, too. So that’s been a lifetime of basically no sensation in my glans, never enjoying sex that much, which has contributed to a few failed relationships.

Lumbar puncture, hands down. They insert a needle into your lower spine to extract fluid for analysis. It was horribly painful and took them several tries to get right.

They gave me incorrect instructions. At least for my case they were incorrect. It is done sitting up. And they told me specifically not to round my back but to slump down. And they poked and prodded and just couldn’t get the needle in. Finally I rounded my back and oh wonderous thing it was suddenly much easier to get the needle in.

That was painful enough but sucking the fluid out is downright sickening. You can really feel it along your spine and in your head. Absolutely awful. I felt like passing out.

And of course they found absolutely nothing.

Treatment for head and neck cancer. Surgery (not so bad), Chemo and Daily radiation. The chemo was rough, and the anti nausea pill did nothing. Radiation starts out fine, but half way through the sunburn inside your throat is horrible, and the combo of chemo and radiation kills your salivary glands and so instead of thin saliva you just have a thick mucous like hot mozzarella cheese strings on a pizza that you can’t seem to spit out and it chokes you to swallow. Your body is so tired that 10cc of water into the Gtube feeder makes you vomit. You lose all taste, so everything is like chewing soggy cardboard.

The only positive is I no longer have to shave my neck, the beard hair there just never grew back.

A doctor once gave me a month’s supply of a drug only approved for use for 10 days due to liver toxicity. I learned about the limit from a news article and stopped taking it.

I experienced no ill effects that I know of, but his malpractice put me at risk of death or lifelong complications. I learned to double-check everything myself after that.

CW: self harm, suicide

When I was a teenager i was experiencing extreme mental health issues from a double whammy of depression, ptsd, and issues with home life, leading to self harm and suicidal ideation/attempts. I ended up being committed to an inpatient psychiatric facility. It ended up being psychological torture more than anything, and really only made me better at masking. One of the worst things that stands out still is them putting everyone in a room to watch a video that was 911 recordings of siblings and parents finding their sibling/child after they’d committed suicide and calling 911 distraught and breaking down, interspersed with people talking about how other people are impacted and hurt by those actions. It boiled down to guilting us for what we were going through. Which, when part of your issue is already self-hate and guilt, just caused more pain than anything resembling help.

I’m having breast cancer removed next week so come back to me then. Considering the biopsy hurt for weeks it’s going to be FUN, I’m sure.

My grandfather had a bad case of flu. Went to the hospital and they put him on IV fluids but found out he was allergic to something. Fucked him up good and wouldn’t accept he was having issues until it was too late.

Had to traych him up so he could breathe.

Blew out his kidneys.

Basically significant organ failure. He walked into the hospital for the flu and they mistreated him, and he never walked out. Came home in a walker and a dialysis schedule and breathing out of his neck.

Took him 8 years to die after that. He was basically a corpse. Grandmother sold her business, sold their lake house, sold their classic car, all to try and pay all of the medical bills and be his full time caretaker. Just an awful situation.

I have a chiari malformation, which is essentially my brain falling down the back of my neck. During the period if time where we were still figuring out what was going on I was asked to get a CT mylegram. Now no one explained to me what this was, but i thought it was a CT scan. So i show up to the hospital, having driven myself, and sort of kick around until my appointment.

Then the doctor has me lay on a table face down. There is a man there, big muscles, standing next to the table. The table has a hole in the head pillow. The doctor says hell be right back hes just grabbing the needle. I say wait what needle?

Hes like oh its the needle for the contrast dye for the CT scan. I’m like oh ok and settle down. The doctor comes back and asks me to lift the bottom of my shirt so he can access my back. I stop again and go what are you talking about.

He let’s me know at this point, for some fucking reason, that the dye is going inside the spinal column. This is a god damn spinal tap and i learn 2 seconds into it about to happen.

I’m nervous but i lay back down and the big guy puts all his weight on my shoulders to hold me still and they start the procedure. The actual needle doesn’t hurt that much, no more than any other needle. But then they inject the dye.

There is this…hot pressure feeling. My chest starts feeling tight, like an elephant is stepping on it. The muscular guy has to really push to hold me down because involuntarily I jerk. My head is swimming, I feel hot, and i feel like my chest is being crushed to dust.

They transfer me to a movable table and quickly wheel me to the CT room. I don’t remember much of this because i was hyperventilating and cursing. I didn’t have much control over what i was doing and I’m shocked I was able to stay still enough for the CT scans.

When the burning and crushing sensation started to pass I was laying on a bed with the muscular guy who was watching over me. He asked if i was ok and then asked if i wanted a sandwich from the cafeteria? He ordered me one, never got charged for it. We talked about videogames for a couple hours, and then they released me to drive home. I almost passed out on the way home and ended up later developing a CSF leak.

Worst experience of my life 0/10 do not recommend.

Not me, but in the span of a couple weeks I had some really awful experiences with pediatricians. My middle kid was almost three when they had a horrific fever and was complaining about a stiff neck, which is a huge red flag… But the ER sent us home with the diagnosis of “neck torsion.” A few hours later we went to a different ER because they had a lump the size of a grapefruit in their neck from an infected lymph node. Required several days in the hospital to get IV antibiotics.

A couple weeks after that I gave birth to our youngest, and at her 3 day check up her doctor claimed to see sores in her mouth and was worried about herpes (despite the fact that neither me nor my spouse have any STDs) so she sent us to the ER… No one there bothered looking in her mouth until after a lumbar puncture. Then someone realized there were no sores at all, but harmless gum cysts that are extremely common in infants. They kept her overnight for monitoring and that morning a med student presented the case to her peers as a cautionary tale to verify symptoms before jumping into an LP.

Being stitched for a tear after childbirth was bad. As someone else mentioned - IUD insertion is done with no pain medicine, that was bad. I think the worst pain related to literal medical procedures are those women’s ones, for whatever reason they are done without anesthesia and really do hurt.

Worst PAIN I have ever felt, though, is migraine. Hands down. Worse than childbirth.

I’m only calling this the worst because I was young enough for my other procedures that I don’t fully remember the pain.

I developed a cyst on my labia. Not a bartholyn for those with experience, higher up. I was doing the warm compress thing but it wasn’t helping. Within a matter of hours it went from the size of a pea to the size of a golf ball. Obviously I had to go get that dealt with.

You’d think the cutting me open and draining it part would be pretty bad. Or even the healing. Nope. Local anesthetic to the labia was absolutely the worst pain I can remember feeling. And I got my finger stuck between two gears one time.

The 3 minutes or so of agonizing, burning pain lasted longer than the time it took them to cut me, drain it, and pack it. My husband had bruises from me gripping him so hard and was bleeding from involuntary nails digging in.

Shockingly I didn’t even take any of the pain killers they gave me for recovery. By the time the numbness wore off there was no pain left. Trying to pee after was another story. Thank god for the invention of a Peri bottle.

But yeah, felt like someone set my labia on fire while also stabbing me with a knife. 0/10