What's the sickest you've ever been?

Food poisoning and a sprained ankle at the same time. Hopping to the toilet to vomit for hours was the height of fun!

Same for me OP. A kidney stone, coupled with a kidney infection, left me in the hospital on an IV of zofran, antibiotics, and morphine for 3 days. The pain was so unbearable I passed out in the car on the way to the ER at 3am. (I was not driving) What put me in the hospital was I could not stop vomiting, and it took a week for the stone to pass. I would not wish the pain of a "stuck" kidney stone on my worse enemy. They were going to operate but I ended up passing it before it went that far. Passing the stone was agonizing, and the sweet release of endorphins was such a relief. Silver lining? I lost 15lbs. Down side is once you get one, you are at risk for developing another. I drink water non-stop now.

I came down with the stomach flu once and was in bed for over a week.

Had cellulitis in my lower right leg two times- so bad that I was hospitalized the first time for 5 days, second time for 10 days as that time I developed Red Man Syndrome- look that one up…never wish cellulitis on anyone, pain was beyond comprehension.

Good G-d, I am afraid of kidney stones. My office mate had one this year, and he said he thought he was going to go out of his mind in pain.

One of my friends had one and ranked it with the difficult labor she'd just had giving birth.

Why do people vomit at the height of the kidney stone experience? Is it a bodily reaction to extreme pain?

I've had bad bouts of the flu but the most memorable was probably getting food poisoning just as I was leaving to go home after a month in Malaysia and Cambodia. Ate from food stalls with no problem all month but then I actually got sick from a restaurant next to the Kuala Lumpur airport and spent the whole flight back home puking and shitting. The layover was in Qatar and I had to find a doctor in the airport who I could barely understand - he gave me something that helped but barely. My digestion wasn't the same for months afterward.

What I thought was bronchitis turned into bilateral pneumonia with pleural effusion; that itself wasn’t so bad, but the sepsis, that was two weeks in ICU on a vent. Fun times...

The flu as a teenager. Proper flu. Not a cold virus.

Swine flu 1976 with fever of 105.

PCP pneumonia in hospital , but worst aspect was that I was simultaneously detoxing on alcohol , with no help from the staff. Also , all the drugs they gave me (esp. prednisone)caused an anal outbreak of herpes. 6 years ago. Healthy as a horse now. Hard to believe I was near death.

R7, I came close to having to be on a vent with an asthma attack. Thank goodness it didn't come to that but they spoke to me about it. Being on a vent is one of my biggest fears. During the time you were on it did they at least keep you asleep with some kind of medication? I can't imagine how anyone can tolerate having that down their throat. I'd also be afraid if they kept me awake and I freak out they would tie my hands down. OMG, that's the worst.

I had a wide awake endoscopy once, and it just took a couple of minutes and I thought I was suffocating. They had to hold my hands still in back of me to keep me from pulling it out while they took the pictures of my gut that they needed.

So were you awake during the time you were on the vent?

Asian flu. was sick for eight weeks and had a fever of 105. couldn't speak or see part of the time.

The week I was born.

I got every childhood illness except the mumps while in the hospital.

They thought I was gonna die.

The year of my 12th birthday, I broke my arm, and after it healed and after my birthday had occurred, I cut my finger on a metal hinge and needed seven blue stitches. I still have the scar. It's faint, but it's there.

Childhood bouts of kidney infections. I'd wake up puking uncontrollably and in intense pain. The first infection, at age 5, freaked my parents out and I nearly died from dehydration.

I had an intestinal obstruction (it turned out to be scar tissue wrapped around the intestine from a previous surgery). I couldn't poop or fart, my abdomen was HUGELY distended, worst pain ever and of course I couldn't eat or drink anything, they put me on morphine but I still couldn't sleep from the pain, and I had to worry about the shit in my intestines being forced up and out my mouth. It took them 5 days to realize it wasn't going to fix itself and performed surgery.

[quote]Why do people vomit at the height of the kidney stone experience? Is it a bodily reaction to extreme pain?

Yup!

I had kidney stones three times, each one two years apart, but the third was almost 25 years ago.

Tip: if your stones are calcium oxalate, up your intake of magnesium and B6. Both help the body absorb calcium, and since I began supplementing (after the third stone), I haven't had another.

*knocking on wood*

Another kidney stone victim here. At the time, I was in grad school in an area known for the high quantities of lime in its water. It hit me out of nowhere—woke me out of a sound sleep—and within an hour the pain got so bad I couldn't stand up straight. My roommate got me to the hospital, where they gave me Demerol (woo-hoo!). I passed the stone while I was in the ER, but they gave me a take-home prescription for a few Percocets, which were lovely as well.

I had the flu a few years ago and I was quite delirious for a day or two. I went from having the sweats to the chills every 15 minutes. I remember at one point when I was completely out of my mind, I had to pee and I also had horrible chills. I reasoned that, if I just wet the bed, not only would I not have to risk passing out from getting up but I would also warm myself up. A bout of mild sane-ness hit me and I got up to pee.

Not a kidney stone, but gall bladder attack. It wasn't as bad as gall stones but it was what they call 'gravel'. My doctor said I got it from eating ultra low fat, which causes the unreleased bile to crystallize in the bladder, followed by a very fatty meal, which caused the bladder to try to release bile.

I got sick from the swine flu in '68'. I had 105 fever and then got the measles right after I got the flu.

Damn, R20, glad you're still here. That flu was a killer.

I had mono when I was in third grade.

The first night that I remember as being truly awful was just before I'd been diagnosed. I was up all night long unable to swallow because my throat had swollen. I had to sit hovering over a garbage can and spit into it until dawn.

My parents were mostly good parents, but very old-school. I tried to wake them up, but was told to drink a glass of water and go back to bed. When I couldn't fucking swallow my own saliva!

They had to go to work the next day, so I was home alone. I started feeling so awful I went out and sat on the bench on our front porch and cried.

A dad who was a doctor and lived down the street drove by and stopped. He diagnosed me on the front porch as having mono!

I was mostly in bed for an entire month. At one point, my fever went to 106 and my mom and a neighbor rushed me to the doctor. I was hallucinating that dog paws were coming out from underneath the closet door. Apparently having visions was the most effective way for me to get my parents to recognize a medical crisis.

When I had Hong Kong flu during the 1968 pandemic. I came very close to dying.

Scarlet fever in 2012. I was flabbergasted when I received my diagnosis as I associated scarlet fever with Little House on the Prairie, not 21st-century suburbia. It took almost two weeks for Levaquin to stamp it out. Now I know why so many people succumbed to it in the not-so-distant past (and today in certain parts of the world).

I heard that weakens the heart, R24. Have you been checked for this? Glad you made it past that. I keep waiting for the next big 'pandemic' and wish I wasn't.

Wow! You guys are scaring me to death. Redman Syndrome?!

Back pain. I was jogging on an indoor track and about 15 minutes into the routine, between one step and the next, it felt like someone jabbed an icepick into the base of my spine. I went down, hard, and couldn't move for a few minutes because the pain was so intense. I tried to pull myself up using the railing but I couldn't do it. I crawled to the locker room and waited for my boyfriend to help me to the car and drive me to the local clinic.

At the height of severe depression I had what felt like a knife stabbing me in my stomach and constant adrenaline rushing through my body. One benzo later and the pain went away. I had no idea the brain could manifest pain like that.

Felt like I was getting sick one night so I hopped into the shower, assuming I wouldn't be up to it for a few days once the virus fully hit. I honestly don't remember much after that except massive pain in my lower right quadrant and telling my partner to call an ambulance. Was unconscious but roused enough to get on the gurney -- none of the EMTs would help, though. My partner had to do it. I have a few suspicions as to why.

In the ER I got oxygen and it woke me up just in time to pass out from the morphine. Turns out I'm allergic. Finally after an hour in & out of consciousness I wake up enough to be told they couldn't get blood the normal way while I was out so they tried on my wrists and botched it a bit, so sorry. Also, they had done a scan and it wasn't appendicitis like they thought, just an enormous swollen lymph node from what they assumed was the flu.

Went home, went to bed, woke up 2 days later with bloody bandages on my wrists and only spotty memories of what had happened.

My partner got it a few days later but with projectyle vomiting, though it was less severe (he never passed out) and he was fine 4 days later.

Holy Shit, R29, that's a harrowing story. I'm sure you're glad it wasn't something worse, but dang if that hospital didn't give a few more things to feel pain over.

R11, I hope this doesn’t give you nightmares. I lack an enzyme that metabolizes succinylcholine. The enzyme is pseudocholinesterase. Succinylcholine was frequently used during abdominal surgery. It completely paralyzes you. How did I learn I lacked this enzyme? The hard way. I woke up from surgery unable to move and then I realized I was on a ventilator.

Every once in a while someone would peel open one of my eyes and tell me I’d had a “reaction” to the anesthesia. It wasn’t a reaction, of course, but my lacking the enzyme that caused the problem. I guess “reaction” was easier to explain, because the immobile are all stupid, you know, as well as apparently hard of hearing (please don’t yell in our ear).

They told me that I’d be fine as soon as the anesthesia wore off. I didn’t believe them. I thought something horrible had happened during surgery and this was now my life. I was 23 at the time. And I thought I would be like that always. A thing in a bed.

This went on for SIX AND A HALF FUCKING HOURS. And the whole time I was screaming just like that in my head. No sedation. I’ve always been claustrophobic and had always thought that would be the worst thing that could happen to my body And it was. I know people survive, some even thrive, like that for many years. I could not. I’m honestly not sure why I didn’t go completely mad.

It made me even more claustrophobic. It made me a basket case about having even minor procedures done. Surgeons and anesthesiologists are always very nice about it as I’m blubbering away explaining why I’m blubbering. They are usually horrified that I was unsedated.

Holy shit, I’m writing a book here. Sorry. I’ll wrap up. There is now a genetic marker for the pseudocholinesterase. All my blood relatives were checked and no one else lacks the enzyme. I never learned why I was not kept sedated. I always figured it was because I was in the Army at the time and and was supposed to be tough.

When I started to be able to move again, I banged on the rails and kept banging until one of the docs said he’d try to take me off the vent. I just kept on banging and I’m pretty sure he saw the potential for murder in my eyes if that fucking thing didn’t come out NOW.

Breathing is so fucking beautiful.

Every time I’ve needed another procedure (I got shitforlungs) my husband and I have The Talk, in which I remind him again how horrible this was and if something like that ever happened he better pull the plug and make sure I was sedated until safely dead. I’m not afraid of death. I’m flat-out terrified of living like that. He loves me and he gets it. He also knows if he let me go without sedation I’d come back and haunt him until the end of time. It wouldn’t be a pretty “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir” haunting, though. I’d be a proper wailing banshee and drip ichor all over his soft furnishings bwahaha.

Thanks for sticking with me, Reader, if stick you did. The drive from the Bay Area to SW AZ is one of the most boring trips on earth. And that is why you got to read this today. :)

R31 wins. Thread closed.

I recently turned 60, and though I’ve been sicker, this was absolutely the most traumatic medical experience I’ve had. It’s still hard to write about all these years later.

Cool, R32! Do I get a commemorative shirt?

I had a misdiagnosed ruptured appendix. Actually sent home from the Cape Cod hospital on a Sunday. Came back the next day (they thought it might have been a kidney stone) only to be rushed into emergency surgery. In the end, they did save my life. I was in the hospital for a full week.

I do look back on that now and realized how close to death I was.

Relatively minor compared to others here, I caught the measles as a kid in the mid 1970s. I'd been vaccinated, but apparently had received a "bad batch." I got the red dots all over my face and chest, and there were so many the rash really became a solid patch of red over my cheeks, forehead, and chest area, plus a fever of 105 with severe aches and delirium. Because the measles was so rare in the US, I was treated as a learning experience for a dozens of med students who each took a turn examining me and prodding my rashes while I lay there nearly naked, supremely embarrassed and too feeble to protest.

The funniest serious illness I had was about 12 years ago, back during LiveJournal days. A friend had belatedly posted pics from his Halloween party, and that night I got sick with a high fever. I hallucinated that his wife in her Mad Hatter costume was in my bedroom offering me tea.

The best thing was that the virus was clobbering the whole country and two others in completely different states had the exact same hallucination when sick.

This is gross so bear with me. I was on my computer one Sunday evening about 3 years ago when I felt the need to take a dump. Unusual because I generally do that in the morning. I know my bodily responses and knew a bout of diarrhea was coming and it did, like water pouring out of a faucet. When I looked in the bowl I saw a sea of dark red and brown goop. There was also blood on the toilet paper. I went back to the computer, completely in denial but in seconds returned for rounds two and then three, all with the same results. I packed a bag, called a cab and went to the ER at 12:00am on a Sunday night. I spent the next 18 hours there due to a shortage of hospital rooms and having no clue what was wrong. They finally performed a partial colonoscopy but found nothing so scheduled me for a full colonoscopy as well as a stomach exploratory to check for ulcers. The doctor who saw me laid out various scenarios with the final, cancer, being the scariest. He also told me I had lost so much blood I was borderline for a transfusion. Long story short, they found nothing but a small polyp and the eventual diagnosis was Diverticulosis. needless to say, to this day, I get anxiety when i look into the bowl after a shit. Have a good day!

Gosh. I don’t want to jinx myself but in my 47 years I’ve only had minor physical maladies. Like maybe the flu a few times, but never as severe as some of your stories. The kidney stone stories are awful, but the poor guy with PCP who was also detoxing takes the cake. I’m glad you survived that, the PCP alone would have killed you back in the bad old days of AIDS.

Mental health though, I had a panic attack so severe while driving that I thought I was going to die. I actually thought someone fed me LSD because suddenly in the middle of driving I felt myself drop out of reality and ‘watch’ myself. My chest was thumping so hard I thought I was going to have a heart attack, I couldn’t breathe. Somehow I made it home (went through a red light too) and screeched up to our house and ran in hysterical. Somehow my mom got me calmed down for about 20 minutes or so, but then it started again and she took me to the ER. It was panic disorder, but it presented itself almost as a psychotic episode. I was also covered in hives all over my face, neck, and chest. Do you know what they gave me in the ER? Not a tranquilizer and not an anti psychotic drug...simple Benadryl. And it worked. It’s potent enough to calm down a panic attack although obviously it’s not first-line and they really gave it to me for the hives, but it settled me down. This was in the late 80s, I suppose now they’d give a patient a dose of Xanax or something in the ER.

R38, I feel for you! I had one episode of ulcerative colitis and shit blood. Ugh. I had to have a transfusion and my potassium levels were so low they were worried about my heart. I had to have IV potassium, which burns like crazy. They set it on the slowest possible drip, but it still hurt so much I spent most of the day crying. My single episode of UC was caused by eating black licorice. Real licorice, Glycyrrhiza glabra. I’ve never had the slightest desire to eat any more of the stuff. It’s funny how a shitty experience can do that.

My last kidney stone caused a blockage and a massive urinary tract infection from which I developed sepsis. I was in terrible pain but managed to drive to urgent care puking into a bag as I drove. Urgent care called an ambulance. I had a fever of 105 and was dehydrated. My heart rate was unbelievable. The weird thing is that I'd worked all day and figured that was why I felt so fatigued but when the pain hit it was obvious I had to do something. They put a stent up into my kidney and I was in the hospital for five days. They later blasted it with a laser and it was easy to piss it out. I have been a lot more careful with my health since then.

I had a rare illness called 'Stephens Johnson Syndrome". My body was covered in burns and blisters and the linings of my organs were burnt and coming away.

There is no cure - you just have to provide comfort and hydration and hope to survive it. It was 20 years ago, but I still suffer from residule effects including scarring, lung damage, partial blindness and immune illnesses, but am just glad I survived. I can't take antibiotics or many other medications in case it comes back.

My boss had some kind of flu or similar for weeks. He said he went through two series of antibiotics. I had an important job, as far as he was concerned, anyway, and as he said his yearly bonus was at stake. He spent a lot of time hovering over my shoulder and coughing on me.

So, I finally got the flu, and weeks later, I started coughing-up blood. I went to the hospital. They sent me home. After two more weeks, I went back to the hospital and they admitted me for pheumonia. After five days in the hospital, I left “against medical advice”. I worked one day, and then took another 30 days off, as I was still too weak.

Then, my asshole boss wrote in my review “Joe does excellent work, when he is in the office.” I hadn’t blamed him for making me sick, but I do blame him for this stupid, hypocritical comment and his judgement.

I saved my bosses job & bonus, but received the smallest bonus possible, without being no bonus at all.

R7 I was heavily sedated for the first week, and remember bits and pieces of conversations between doctors and nurses and respiratory therapists, and know that my sisters and father visited at some point (they lived three states away), and had many vivid Ativan-is-a-hell-of-a-drug dreams. I went in on a Tuesday, and remember asking (not sure how) what day it was and they said Monday so I knew I’d been there for a while, and that was shocking.

My hands were tied, but that wasn’t too much of a problem until they backed off the sedation and I became more lucid. Most nurses would remove the restraints so I could try and communicate by pencil and paper. Too bad I couldn’t write for shit and didn’t know sign language so that was frustrating to say the least. It wasn’t until I turned the corner and was conscious most of the time that the vent became uncomfortable, but not long after that they extubated me.

The worst part was waiting a week on the cardiac wing so they could continue my i.v. antibiotics and wait for a catherization as they thought I’d had a heart attack while in the ambulance on my way to the hospital. It’s much better to be unconscious in a hospital.

Appendicitis as a kid. I was misdiagnosed and sent home with pain killers. I stopped crying eventually, after a few hours I lost the will to live because the pain was so intense and turned to my grandmother who was sat on my bed looking at me afraid and I said I'm dying aren't I and she said no you aren't, unconvincingly. They got me back into the hospital after I passed out with pain. The appendix had burst and I had contracted peritonitis. I was there for 6 weeks. I was 9. I have a 13 inch scar running down my stomach.

Trigeminal neuralgia was worst pain ever

Was moving a mirror in my first apartment out of school. It was a large, wall-length mirror. It dropped onto my fingers and cut them open to the bone, four of them. I began bleeding everywhere, obviously, just gushing blood until I fainted. I came to shortly thereafter. However, I had just started a new job and was afraid to call in sick, the boss was a terror, so I drove myself to the office with band-aids all over my hands, which did nothing, the blood just kept pouring out. Nobody seemed to notice and I was too intimidated to ask to leave. That night one of my fingers swelled up like a balloon and began turning black--it was obviously infected and there were shards of dirty glass beneath the skin. I then said screw it, I'm missing work, and I went to the ER. Fortunately the infection didn't travel, I was given stitches and antibiotics, but I still have an enormous scar across my hand (and feel a bit angry that nobody noticed I reported to work gushing blood).

I had a case of sinusitis that lasted over a month. I was horribly I'll but because I hadn't been at my job that long I was terrified of taking time off, so i only took one sick day. Looking back, that as well not going to the doctor to get some antibiotics, was an incredibly stupid decision.

I had pancreatitis caused by a routine procedure in hospital. Ended up on ketamine and fentanyl for a month, a tube into a major artery because i couldn't eat. Worst pain i've ever been in.

The things that can go wrong with us, huh?

R42, that makes my little story look like a walk in the park. I hope your life is filled with loveliness.

Seconding the best wishes for R42.

Difficult to diagnose strain of mono, sophomore year in college. Spent months with swollen glands, weight loss and night sweats, got blood tests, chest x-rays, and cultures, ruled out one diagnosis after another. My parents finally pulled me out of school when I was too weak to sit up and my roommate had to call home to tell them so. Didn't really understand how sick I was (who does at 19?) until we finally got a positive diagnosis from an ear, nose and throat specialist, and I saw the relief wash over my father's face. I realize now my parents expected I'd be diagnosed with a horrible, fatal disease. But nope, just the kissing disease. Took a good year or more to get back to where I started before the infection.

I’ve had the flu twice, but the worse was pleurisy . I ended up in the hospital for 2 days. The pain was unbearable. I got Demerol shots every few hours.

Kidney infection. I went through a 5-7 year period when I’d get them recurringly. Organ pain of all sorts has got to top the list, but kidney pain in particular is in some inner circle of Hell. Blinding pain that takes your legs right out from under you. It is constant. Not a throb, or coming in waves, but full on unrelenting mind splitting pain.

R44 thanks for coming back and answering. You are much braver than I am. I don't think I could take that, even from the part of being just partially conscious. Fully conscious I think I would have had a stroke or heart attack, just from the fear of feeling suffocated. I'm so happy you were okay in the end.

R31, OMG, that is another of my fears, waking up during surgery. I read once that happens way more than people think. I swear I don't know how you and R44 made it through

Now comes another of my fears, actually terrors, is what happened to you R42. I too have severe allergies to most antibiotics and other medications. I'm a nightmare for my doctors to prescribe for. They have to get the head of infectious disease at the hospital I go to involved to try to figure out what won't kill me. Getting Stephens Johnson Syndrome is something that I think about every time I take any kind of medication, even OTC medication can cause it. You can take something you've taken your entire life and suddenly get Stephens Johnson Syndrome from it.

That you lived is a miracle. As you probably know most people who get it die. It's like having 3rd degree burns over your entire body. Your skin is gone and you are vulnerable to any and every infection and chances are there is no antibiotic you can take for any bacterial infection. The pain had to be unbearable. I'm SO sorry you had to go through that.

Some of you here have gone though my worst medical fears and if there is a god I hope he or she watched over you and is still watching over you. You truly are heroes for what you have survived.

Oh crap I always forget

R42 here. Thanks guys for your well-wishes. Yes, it was horrible and excruciatingly painful, but it has made me stronger and now I am grateful every day that I survived it. The fear of it coming back is with me all the time, but any hurdles I face in life are never going to be as bad as when I got SJS, so if I can get through that then I can get through anything. :).

illness bump