I had a female patient in the ED who apologized multiple times for "probably making a big deal out of nothing" when she had actual gallstone pancreatitis.

Me growing up thinking I had a low pain tolerance when I really just had chronic pain

"Low pain tolerance". Nope, dude just got gaslit by all his previous doctors.

My son has high functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder. He broke his collarbone in a soccer game. He told them hos pain level was a 3 so they did not give him anything. When they took the x ray & could see how shattered it was, they still did not give him anthing. I made them give him someone before SENDING US HOME! They said I could follow up with an orthopedist if I wanted to. They gave us a pain prescription to fill, but on a Saturday evening. There was only 1 pharmacy open. The poor kid stayed that way until Monday. Called first Monday, the had the surgery schedule before we arrived. The doctor took one look at the xray & was pissed. Apparently he was the ortho on call for the ER, but they never consulted him on my son's xray or he would have been admitted & had surgery on Sunday. Lessen learned, be a Karen in the ER.

Opposite happened to me. My nurse said I had a really low pain tolerance. Apparently getting split like a baked potato and part of your colon removed is not supposed to hurt and I was just being a baby

I remember when I went to the ER and felt stupid because it was just my shoulder and back hurting a lot, thinking I was stupid to be in the ER because it was "probably just muscular strain or something", since my shoulder and back was hurting. I had blood clots in my lungs lmfao

As someone with an extremely high pain tolerance, I get this. Doctors and nurses never take my pain seriously, because I don’t have much of a reaction, so I have to sit them down and make the most uncomfortable, neurodivergent eye contact and vveerryy sslloowwllyy tteellll tthheemm wwhhaatt iiiiisssssss gggoooiiinnnggg ooooooonnnnnnnnnn. 😮‍💨

being a 25yo girl with chronic pain trying to get people to understand that my 3 would probably be their 7 or 8 and have them crying, but it's just my baseline daily existence. When I have flair-ups I'm never believed, gave me years of imposter syndrome

I remember being 16 and at the hospital with lower abdominal pain that when pressed, hurt more when i let go. Classic sign of appendicitis and i self-diagnosed that at home, that's WHY i went to emergency. I spent the next FIVE HOURS arguing with the doctors that no, it WASN'T reflux and no, i will NOT be going home and that it is my APPENDIX and I'm not leaving until they do something about it. They didn't believe i was actually in pain because i was calm and composed, but when they had to do needles, i cried and freaked out. Blood tests, ultrasound, xray, everything came back as 'inconclusive'. I kicked up enough of a fuss that they eventually agreed to exploratory surgery because i was using all the right legal words to hold them responsible. My first memory upon waking up was hearing the doctor telling my parents how I'd had two ruptured ovarian cysts, and my EXTREMELY INFLAMED appendix had burst during the keyhole surgery and they'd had to restart my heart on the table. That whole experience, on a scale of 1 to 10? That was a 4. I've had a 10. Pain scales don't mean anything.

Blew out my ovarian artery and was calm, mostly. Dumb nurse wrote me as "Drunk, possibly on drugs, and Low priority" 5 and a half hours later the baseball sized hematoma was the size of a Football. Someone told us about the doorbell, rang it and got a different nurse who looked in shock as soon as she saw me. Got sent back, doctor came in, one look, lots of swearing, Morphine and he yelled at the triage nurse. Surgery and 4 days on Maternity Ward, finally got to go home with over 200+ stitches 🪡

every woman know how it feels to be dismissed by a doctor when in pain. that's why we have to advocate for ourselves like crazy to get the proper care we deserve.

most unrealistic part of this is immediately giving someone morphine to help with pain

I had MRSA eating into my foot and finally came in after weeks of being up all night in pain. I told the nurse I was in recovery so I didn’t want pain meds to be prescribed unless I really couldn’t get the pain under control while in the ER. I’ve been sober over 10 years but it’s still a worry of mine. They do a culture and blood test and I’m septic. They need to admit me and start vanco- okay sweet let’s do this and get it fixed. The doctor who comes in while they’re trying to get an iv in and can’t (I have vEDS and next to no superficial veins) is upset with me for… being difficult I guess? So she asks to look at my foot. Okay cool, here ya go. She touches it with hands wet with hand sanitizer. I have been holding back tears the entire time but this was too much. 9/10 the worst pain I have ever felt. Worse than gall bladder stones. Worse than labor. Worse than tooth pain. Bad. So I cry. I’m trying so hard to choke it back. I’m apologizing, it just really hurts and she didn’t even say sorry. She then says “well with that pain tolerance, I don’t think we’ll be giving you any pain meds for this.” What? Excuse me? I haven’t even asked for pain meds and honestly I knew once vanco was running I’d feel a lot better. Where did that even come from? I didn’t ask and you’re the one who hurt me. I was fine until you touched it. It’s not like I started bawling because she walked into the room or something. They gave me 1 round of vanco and sent me home with no take home meds and not even a referral to i dont know infectious disease, wound care - nothing. I have been through some Shit but I don’t think I’ve ever felt as dehumanized as I did at that hospital that day.

I told the ER that I was "probably just having period cramps". Turns out my gallbladder ruptured. When i went to a doctor, the pains I had been feeling for a whole year before it ruptured, they told me it was "just bad cramps' and they changed my birth control.

"Low pain tolerance" = everybody underestimating how painful pain is

I have the opposite problem. I have Ehlers-Danlos and lots of pain all the time everywhere. So I'm used to just tuning it out so i can still function. But i do worry that someday ill ignore something i shouldnt be ignoring. But if i went to a doctor for *every* pain, even just the weird new ones, id never leave.

Im the opposite. I had a ruptured ectopic pregnancy and was actively bleeding out internally and very calmly rated my pain 7/10, made jokes then laughed and made jokes not to make me laugh and overall successfully convinced everyone i was just fine without meaning to. Then they cut me open and found almost a litre of blood vibing in my abdomin, fun times.

I have scoliosis, and apparently I have a super high pain tolerance. The catch is that I'm constantly in mild-moderate pain that I don't actively register. Your brain will ignore chronic pains, which makes sense for survival, but is extremely annoying when youre trying to asses the severity of an injury. What happens to me is if I get a mild discomfort, my already loaded pain sensors go absolutely nuts, leading to what appears to be me whining about something minor and getting judged for it. THAT has led to a bad habit of me pushing myself way more than a standard person without the back pain would. I also struggle to exercise, as my brain immediately takes that discomfort and my pain and thinks I must be actively dying, so I go into flight mode. We are still working on how to resolve that issue. If you find mild pains to be super overwhelming, don't discount that you may have something else going on (neurodivergence can also cause it)!

I think the most annoying part of dealing with the doctor is when they ask you to rate the pain on a scale of 1-10. It's nonsense. How can you quantify pain? If it hurts, it hurts, and not everyone is so forthcoming about their discomfort. Some people try to put on a brave face and act like the injury or whatever is causing them pain is not as bad as it actually is. For example, I fell the other day and landed on my knee first. The doctor asks me while pressing down on my knee if it hurts and how much it hurts. I'm not 100% sure how to answer that question because they are causing me more pain by pressing onto my knee and moving my leg in all sorts of directions. It's a stupid system and honestly it needs to be discarded.

I was always tpld I was "just whining" and "had a low pain threshold." I mistook a 3mm kidney stone at the same time as a rupturing appendix as my regular period *for 3 weeks*! I also walked on a broken leg for 6 months. The one I am infamous for is getting 10 stitches in my leg. Why was this impressive? I'm allergic to all pain meds, numbing medications, and sedations. I literally sat there chatting with the doctor, holding completely still as I got sewn up with no meds. That was a 4 on my pain scale. The migraine I had at the same time was an 8. Dr and nurse said they had never ever seen someone laughing and chatting while being stabbed repeatedly, much less told that it didn't hurt.

Even if someone truly does have low pain tolerance, it's still pain. Pain is pain, and if it feels bad to you, it feels bad. Don't sugarcoat your own experience. Take care of yourself. 💙

You wouldn't think this would be harmful but getting told every day I just have a low pain tolerance and cry about everything was the main reason I hurt myself as a child. I wanted to prove that I can take it.

PSA to everyone: Not all ER’s are the same. Once I went to an ER in one city and I was treated terribly, I got recommended to another ER the next county over and actually had my issue resolved. Take it from a former ER nurse, some hospitals just suck, and others are just better.

Imposter syndrome but by the patient ! Add that to shyness and not wanting to bother others and you have a good combo !

I have learned to have a high pain tolerance. Between periods and my “mystery” illness which I KNOW id endometriosis, makes living painful in every way. I get up in pain, go to work in pain and relax in pain. I cannot imagine a life without pain as a constant companion. IF I ever find a doctor to take me seriously about my issues, I hope one day I can wake up pain free

I have been told my collapsed lung was FM pain, my fatigue from right sided heart failure was FM and my shoulder blade pain from a gangrenous gallbladder was FM. The cold that was pneumonia was my fault. I have a low tolerance for pain. Adult son just released from hospital with ruptured appendix. Pain level was 2 when it ruptured. Sigh. Doctors don’t believe either of us!

I always thought I had a low pain tolerance because my dad would never take my injuries seriously, except for the time that I broke my wrist and it was visably askew. Then I got yelled at in the ER for constantly readjusting it because it was uncomfortable. It's really funny to tell people that the worst part about breaking your bones is that you simply cannot get the limb in a comfy position. The pain comes and goes but man the discomfort is torture.

My new doctor tried to advise me about when it's the best time to take pain meds. She was very nice, but she assumed there was something like "before the pain starts". I intentionally block some pains in my body all the time, so I can function somehow. I can no longer tell what hurts, until it is too much. I also have a problem with "just relax". I feel like I am holding my body moving just with my will and I cannot remember I ever felt different... Maybe before I became a teenager... I should be in my prime years but I don't feel like it

Me trying to get anyone to pay attention to the fact I can’t walk because my pain is so bad (I was 20 and female)

My mother would never bring me to the doctor for any pain issues or things that felt excruciating because she said “you can just walk it off.” So I grew up thinking that I just had a low pain tolerance for small things. Turns out it’s the opposite- I ended up developing a high pain tolerance and I’ve even pulled a muscle and just continued with life as if nothing was wrong.

As someone with chronic pain, I felt this in my bones. My baseline pain is so high up that my entire scale is screed and it makes it very difficult to discern strange pain from daily pain.

i actually have a similar issue for the opposite reason. i have a pretty high pain tolerance. years of untreated pcos and ibs aka being expected to just tolerate horrible stomach cramping will do that to ya. anyway when i had an appendicitis i nearly got myself killed because i kept dismissing it as just a particularly bad case of cramps. i spent the whole day just putting up with it. at night when the pain got a bit too strong to just deal with my mom rushed me to the er. by the time i was past triage they had to get me a wheelchair because i was in so much pain i couldn't walk anymore. i had emergency surgery at 1 in the morning and the doctors told me if i had put it off for much longer the infection would have spread and hit vital organs. yeah 🥴

It reminds me of the time I’ve felt something that I mistook for early period cramps (my period sould have started 5 days later). I spend an entire weekend with this pain, without a single drop of blood. On sunday evening, it was so painful that I finally called one of my friends to come with me to the ER (I was not of age, so I had to be accompanied by someone of age). It was around 10pm. I had indeed a bladder infection that had reached the kidneys and ended up with two weeks under strong antibiotics. These infections could be fatal within a few days if they are not treated on time by causing a septicemia...

I have deformed meniscus in my knees and started having problems in elementary. I got a big fat diagnoses of “faking it for attention” like five times before it eventually detached from the bone and had to be reconstructed. It took me a month after that injury to get my diagnoses because everyone thought I was faking it.

I love everyone having a story about how they thought they were fine but it was something insane. I just lived thru pain in my abdomen for years cuz I thought I just got constipated but in reality it was a huge fibroid on my uterus that was reaching out and grabbing onto other organs and it was twisting around on itself and so part of it was dying so I just got released from the hospital yesterday from having thay bad boy removed...

I have an insanely high pain tolerance, mostly from being gaslit by doctors that there was nothing wrong with my shoulder when a bone spur was carving little shards of cartilage off the ball joint and all of them were stabbing into the shoulder joint capsule. I walked around for months like that. It got bad enough that I was fantasizing daily about losing the arm in some sort of "accident". The 4th doctor took it seriously. After surgery it was mostly better, but not 100%. Still hurts every day. Now, though, I have a superpower where I just put ice on everything and call it good, because nothing since was as bad as that.

Absolutely someone who got ridiculed or even punished for hurting as a kid....

Please! 😂😂 This has me in shambles. "I wouldn't want them to waste..." LMAOOOOO STOP THIS.

I have a high pain tolerance, so when a dog mauled my hand last year, I was really lucky to have amazing ER nurses who wouldn't let me diminish my pain as women have been conditioned to. They hopped me up on the good pain meds, treated the HOLES in my hand, and sent me home with more goodies. I was not allowed to drive for a week. But I kept full functioning use of my whole hand!!

i really love how the lady treats the patient. i know its just you in a wig, but still, shes so kind and calming.

i went to the er thinking i was being silly cuz it was probably just a flare up of my chronic back pain, expecting to be dismissed, by the time my mom drove me to the hospital i was delirious, by the time they got me to the back i was in and out of consciousness. it was a kidney stone and infection. then i had a nurse argue with me that i couldn’t possibly be dehydrated after drinking several hundred ounces of water (i stopped counting at 380 ounces in 8 hours, all i could think about was water and my eyes and mouth were dry, i chocked it up to the heat) and that if my urine was clear it meant i definitely wasn’t dehydrated. she told me i must have misunderstood the urologist who explained that the kidneys can try to flush themselves out by excreting all of your water as fast as you can replace it 🤦🏼

That's always my medical-related fear. I do have a super low pain tolerance. Like a cold can make me literally unable to get out of bed. I can never figure out the threshold between when I'm just being a baby or if I should go to the hospital. On the other hand, I called an ambulance once because my fever was like 102.7 f and I got worried that I had covid and gave it to everyone I've been around. By I was able to go down the stairs just fine, but by the time I was in the hospital, which couldn't have been more than like 10 minutes later, I couldn't move without my muscles begging me to just stop. Nurses and paramedics thought I was exaggerating. They made me walk to the hospital bed, but at least I was small enough that only two people held me up. Two days later I was told I had a really bad case of rhinovirus, and threw up for three days straight. If it wasn't for my BP and fever that fluctuated so rapidly throughout the night, they would have kicked me out back home.

I'm so glad my doctor has known me since childhood. She knows I have a really high pain tolerance due to chronic back pain and one time when I told her I had a 7 out of 10, she almost called an ambulance to rush me to the nearest hospital xD

I totally thought this was going to end up being about how men in pain get babied by our health care system while women often get little to no pain management and are told were overreacting. This just took me back to when i was 19. Ive always had a high pain tolorence. I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and as it set in i slowly learned to deal with the pain until it got bad ebough it hurt to get out of bed. That same year i went to the ER because I had abdominal pain so bad i was throwing up. Turns out I had endometriosis as well. They also found it during a colonoscopy i had that year. My obgyn though, oh no its not that. I just have a low pain tolorence and its not as bad as im making it out to be. 😤

This makes me think back to the time I had a kidney infection after passing a kidney stone, and my whole body hurt from sepsis, but I didn't ask for any pain meds and they just gave me morphine. I was surprised cause I didn't think I needed it, but I guess i looked miserable. I didnt realize how bad it was until after they gave me the pain meds and started antibiotics. I thought it was just a UTI after passing the stone.

I was told constantly as a child that I was "making a big deal out of nothing". When I had covid, my parents made me go for a 3 mile hike in a high altitude because "you're just lazy, some fresh air will help". So now I always think that I'm just overreacting and being week and I never seek help for anything that I should be seeking help for 😭

Last time I said this it turns out I had a severe infection and sepsis😭 feel this so hard- being in chronic pain can trick you into thinking things aren’t bad too

My pain tolerance is extremely high, to the point that I often cannot recognize when I am in pain. I waited several weeks to go in and I actually had such a bad kidney stone situation that my kidneys almost failed... I still apologized and played it down the whole time. And still do, because I felt fine.

Had a patient recently with an ischaemic limb who said his pain was 5/10. His foot was purple by the time he came back from the angiogram, the guy didn't want any pain relief blew my mind 😂

I'm the opposite lol. When asked about pain level I always have to give the "I have chronic pain so for my pain to be more than an annoyance it's gotta be really bad" speech.

It sucks having a really high pain tolerance. Because then they don't take you seriously half the damn time.

last time I thought I was being dramatic, I had full asthma related lung and throat infection. At the time I didnt even know I had asthma. I just wanted the coughing to stop because after coughing for over 3 weeks it started to hurt real bad

I had one of the most painful sarcomas at age 13, not diagnosed until 15, so to say I have a messed up sense of pain would be an understatement!

Couple of weeks after I'd fallen at work I went in because my knee hadn't been feeling right. Discharged with pain meds, referral to ortho, and instructions not to re-locate my knee caps myself. And to come in sooner next time.

yea parents and past trauma realy fucks you up

I completely get it. I too have a very low pain tolerance. I've spent my whole life avoiding things that are painful, and now I basically can't function when I feel any pain at all. It sucks.

Unrelated but this reminds me of a House MD episode where he's teaching a bunch of med students. "Too late, the patient's dead." "We didn't have enough time for any tests!" "But you had enough time to look at the injury."

As someone on the farmer pain scale.....yeah. I walked into the ER with a belly full of 1.5L (yes, you read that right) of blood. Sat in the waiting room, calm as could be. "What's your pain rating?" "Eh, hurts more than liver failure but less than emergency unaesthetized surgery right now." Look on the nurse's face was priceless. His only response was "I don't have that option in the computer." Told him to go with an 8.

My biggest thing is that my pain tolerance varies dramatically based on the type of pain. I have different length legs, and have had multiple surgeries, so I frequently have knee and hip pain. I also have a tendency towards sinus infections, and get reasonably bad period cramps. I can handle WAAAY more pain from period cramps or sinus pain than I can tolerate in my knees or hips. If my joint pain was directly translated into period cramps, I generally would barely even want Tylenol, but since it’s joint pain, it’s way more uncomfortable

I'm blessed to have wonderful providers at the nearby pain clinic. I have a chronic pain disease and several other problems that cause pain.

I have wrong pain tolerance. Sometimes I’m really injured but it doesn’t hurt but sometimes a boo-boo hurts so bad I go to a doc and they tell me it’s nothing 😐

This is my grandma all over. In her mid-seventies, she got into a motorcycle accident and refused to take any painkillers for her injuries, only paracetamol because she worries it might be too much for her body. She also had a hip replacement and still has the morphine she never used in her cabinet. She is one strong lady 👵💪❤

Me fr, how do I become not afraid of the Dr. as someone with autism 🙈🥲✨️

😂 Wow, this is totally me. I grew up with undiagnosed ADHD and a lot of sensitivity to light, sounds, and textures, and I was very much under the impression that I'm overreacting. "This hurts, but it's probably nothing. It wouldn't bother anyone else, I'm just being a delicate flower again🙄, I'll just ignore it because it's not real pain" And that's how I end up continually going to the doctor WAY too late. Wait until I have a full body rash instead of when it's small, wait until I need an emergency inhaler before consulting about my cough (bronchitis), and once giving birth only 20 minutes after the midwives showed up, and once 15 minutes before. It's hard to judge, because if I try to correct and go when it first bothers me, I'm told "we can't do anything about that, let me know if it gets worse" and then if I wait until I'm SURE it counts as bad, it's "WHY didn't you come in sooner?!" Thing is, I know people who scream and cry over nothing, and if they're encouraged to view it as real harm, it's going to cripple them in life because their view of themselves is "I can't do what other people do because I can't handle it" I'm trying to be balanced in how I raise my sensitive kids. Kind of like, "yep, that is a horrible noise; we'll see if we can turn it off but if not you can muffle the soundwaves by standing behind this large object." Or "I can see that really hurts. The good thing is that it didn't cause as much damage as it feels like, see? it's just a small scratch. Your nerves are focused on it so much that it's all your brain can feel, so I'm going to distract them by squeezing your other foot and rubbing your arm. See? Is that helping? Those nerves are trying to be helpful but they're just too loud, and now your brain thinks your knee is about to fall off, when really it barely needs a bandaid. So, we distract it by giving it other feelings to think about." Which is better than what I got, "well aren't you a sucky baby?" And it's better than "oh no, if it hurts that much, I will carry you for the rest of the day even though you're six!"

As someone with chronic pain, I’ve been shocked that so many people don’t understand what “pain tolerance” means. Often, I’ve met people who have assumed that it means that someone with high pain tolerance (like me, She Who Lives With Chronic Pain) doesn’t feel pain as easily or at all. No, darlin’. My nerve endings are as normal as most. It means I can _endure_ pain better than most. It still feels like a vice grip is on my head or a knife is in my back if I don’t treat it right away.

Patting him on the back? Lol

we need to start teaching the difference between pain tolerance vs pain thresholds... that being said, im super glad the nurse said "we still need to take this seriously" because it seems like thats a rarity nowadays according to so many stories ive heard. good short!

I had a “high pain tolerance” which was actually because I was not diagnosed as hard of hearing and didn’t have the language skills to communicate being in pain. As soon as I started speech therapy, I was complaining

I've suffered from pain that makes me curl up qnd whimper for hours. When I try to describe the pain to myself even, I can't describe it. I thought it was l9w pain tolerance but I can handle migraines and other stuff much better. So maybe I'm in more pain than I myself realize. Note: I hardly go to doctors so doctorss' opinions have no influence here

I had the opposite problem. I thought I had really bad gas, turns out it was a gallbladder full to the brim, almost to bursting, with gallstones.

I feel this deeply. Dad would dismiss any injury I had (including breaks) with “it doesn’t hurt: I can’t feel it”. So I grew up with a high pain tolerance, because showing pain elicited mockery rather than help, whilst thinking I must have a low tolerance.

This is honestly the very real impact of "suck it up" culture. "Sucking it up" and being mature are two different things. I know somebody who had a double hernia for over a decade (he knew about it!), but felt like he had to suck it up. He was very relieved when he finally got surgery...a decade of unnecessary pain!

I have pretty high pain tolerance, in part due to my refusal to take pain meds unless I can't function. I deal with back pain on a pretty constant basis, but I only take ibuprofen if I can't handle standing anymore and I'm in a situation where I have to stand. If I can sit, I just will sit and not take the pain meds. I've recently had tooth pain that I've had to take ibuprofen and Tylenol for, and after I stop taking it my back pain is through the roof and I feel like I can't keep myself standing. Another downside to my refusal to take meds, is that by the time I break down and take the meds, I end up needing to double my dose to actually feel relief from the pain.😊

Maybe this guy is just weird, but this video makes me sad for a completely different reason. There are a lot of people who think they have a “low pain tolerance” but really they’ve just been in chronic pain for so long and had pain ignored by doctors that they think they’re just weak. When really they are not weak they just have been in pain that was ignored by doctors because apparently most doctors in America are fucking assholes.

Followin a reconstructive surgey, which followed multiple minimally treated injuries (workers comp). Before and after, I lived at a 4 for years. Lived on regular OTC NSAIDS. Called a "pain center" for help managing chronic pain. Without seeing me, over the phone, they treated me like a drug seeker. For gods sake, I wanted OT, PT, etc.

I've had the opposite problem so many times, luckily everyone's always been so nice about it.

25 yrs in ED and don't recall ever having a patient declare a low pain tolerance. The number of patients with "high" pain tolerance in dire need of IV opioids is virtually incalculable, however.

That's a HIGH pain tolerance being discussed intetchangably with a LOW pain tolerance. Script is all screwed up.

As someone with a low pain tolerance and anxiety i never know whats bad and whats not 😭

So amusing Doctor. It is addressing this issue and helping us all by having a humorous take on it.Kindest W from England.

My mom and sister always told me that I have a little pain tolerance. I don't know if it's because I'm the baby of the family or because I've never given birth. But when I had kidney stones and I went to the ER they told me that I had a high pain tolerance. It took literally 25 years to get validated that my pain was real and i wasn't being a baby.

this is like an I Think You Should Leave sketch

as someone with a low pain tolerance, i also insist on taking my pains seriously and getting it checked out, pain exists to tell you something is wrong, even if you're less tolerant to it more tolerant to it, the pain existing at all is your body telling you something is wrong, always listen to your body! and most of all trust doctors, but not unconditionally, not all doctors are perfect, but they do know more than you, so try your best to work with them, not against them!

“A minT?” Is sending me

The incredulousness in the doctor’s little “a mint? 🤨” is perfect

I kinda assumed I had a low pain tolerance bc my period cramps sometimes hurt so badly that they make me throw up, turns out I have endometriosis. It's really hard to judge something as subjective as pain and if pain is your only indication of something being wrong it's incredibly easy to just believe that you're the problem.

I thought I had a low pain tolerance but turns out I have been in pain my entire life so to an unknown connective tissue disorder and I have an incredibly high tolerance 😊

A few years ago during the pandemic, I was doing a zoom pe class with my students when I felt a sudden pain in my shoulder. I just figured I over extended my shoulder or something since it happens all the time with my other joints and just went about icing it and resting that arm. A few weeks later I was at a check up with my doctor and off handedly mentioned that my shoulder was still sore and asked her if she had any stretches she could recommend to help with the pain. She looked at me confused and asked to see my back. So I turned around and took off my sweatshirt. She sat their quietly before saying "Your rib is sticking out". Turns out, I had a rib somehow slip out and was rubbing against my shoulder blade, with a big lump on my upper back. She gave me some PT stuff to use and over the next few days it was able to go back in place, no more pain, no more lump. The bright side is I had an official doctors note stating I wasn't allowed to do push-ups anymore during PE.

I managed to stop contractions so I could leave a birth centre that refused to give me entonox because they didn’t believe I was in pain because I wasn’t screaming. The hospital refused to admit me though until my water had been broken for more than 24 hours, so I had to go home and manage with 3 minute apart contractions until the hospital would accept me. When I finally did get admitted it took them a further 13 hours to give me any pain medication, by that point I’d been awake 48 hours of which I had to stand for most of it because lying down caused me vomit and aspirate. Unsurprisingly being in labour nearly 3 days was not good for my health and I nearly died, and that is why my daughter is never getting a sibling.

This really hit home. I have fibromyalgia, so it is the opposite for me, my pain tolerance is extremely high. I told my coworkers, if I ever say the pain is 10/10 call 911, because I am probably missing body parts or dying.

Thank you for taking pain seriously

My mother-in-law had her what was initially diagnosed as having her appendix burst a few years ago and didn’t complain to much about it at first. It turned out to be even worse than that. One doctor commented that they had only seen 2 other similar cases in his decades as a dr and both were fatal, and that she was lucky!

As someone with chronic pain who ended up in the hospital not that long ago when the nurse asked for a pain scale and mentioned 0 being pain free, I actually snorted. And was forced to explain that severe tendonitis with carpal tunnel in both wrists meant that quiet throbbing was the best I could do. Not to mention all the other problems day to day. Breaking bones isn’t as painful as using my fingers/hands to do anything for an hour. Then I had to explain that I’m allergic/resistant to everything but the hard drugs. And I don’t want a drug addiction on top of everything else. Always a fun time.

My mom made me think I had a low pain tolerance, but in my adult life I realised that was far from the truth. She just didn't wanna deal with my issues and shrugged most things. Nowadays she does admit she worries when I complain about pain because most of the time I don't care when I get sick or hurt

My partner really truly has felt, his whole life, a lot more pain than most people.

Medical personnel claim dad has a low pain tolerance, when in reality his pain tolerance is extremely high but they never see him until it's beyond bearable.

For me, I'm fortunate to be born in my country. So my story is a positive one. I had menstrual cramps since 14 and the doctors were very dilligent in trying to figure if I had any issues or if it was just cramps, tho unfortunately, I'm among the few ppl that just have bad cramps. So much so that when I have cramps, I tend to ignore them without painkillers (hoping they go away). A few times when I couldn't get out of bed then I would take medicine, just paracetmol tho, cos you know, I don't want to be dramatic, since it's typical female pains. As such, stomachaches nv seemed to be that bad cos cramps are always worse. Until one time I had a high fever, plus diarrhea, plus stomachache, and I was thinking, I should be fine to go to work, just going to the loo a few times only. And then I ended up almost fainting and asking my husband to send me to the hospital instead. And even though I wasn't very conscious, I still downplayed it and told my husband that we don't need an ambulance, it's not that bad. So we took a taxi. Later at A&E, they thought I just had food poisoning because I appeared ok, just feverish but I could feel something wasnt right so I asked for a second opinion, while worried I'm being dramatic. But a doctor still came to check, when he pressed my abdomen and the location that hurt was not usual for food poisoning, they were worried for appendicitis and such so he kept me in and sent me for CT scan. Later, they diagnosed me with acute colitis and I was hospitalized for 5 days. So even if I'm worried that I'm over dramatic, I'm lucky enough to have doctors that cared enough to make another check rather than dismissing me.

Thank you for this.

Perfect example of how being gaslit for years results in you gaslighting yourself 😮‍💨

Yeah. Mood. 😢 Especially that back part I get radiating pain when people poke my back. Takes probably like 2 minutes for it to stop but everyone acts like it shouldn't hurt at all wtf