I can't remember which was worse, so:
1. I had constant, severe ear infections between 15 and 22. One was so bad that in the middle of the night my ear swelled completely shut, and I was barely able to hear anything. There was some type of fluid (or sweat) leaking out, and I was crying in pain. I refused to got to the OR when my parents wanted to do (this was like 12:00 at night). I managed to fall asleep after taking a lot of tylonel. The next day I went to the doctor and got put on some type of super-inflammatory. That felt sooooooooo much better after it kicked in. I believe that that was the start of many different visits to a EN&T doctor to have fungus scraped out of my ear and getting ear drops specially mixed to fight it.
2. Pushing weight on machines, and ignoring a pain in my back that kept getting worse. While getting into my car, that was a sudden flash of pain. There didn't appear to be any hernia (or whatever) but I had to hunch over to walk around the apt., and could barely get in and out of bed. Last year, without pushing weights, I had a sudden reoccurance for no reason when getting OUT of the car. Again, days of pain, etc. I was still going to grad school and had to miss a few classes. Even when I was better, but not healed, I had to get a new backpack with wheels on it to take my books around. Professors liked having us bring lots of heavy books that we only looked at 10% of the time :|
Both cases were still less painful than the time I broke my elbow off. I had to have two different operations, because putting in a single screw wasn't enough to stop the pieces of bone from driftin apart, so they had to do another operation to set in another screw and cabling system. The first time it was a constant pain, though still better than either. They gave me morphine... which wasn't working. They kept asking if I was in pain, and they kept giving me morphine till they hit the max they were allowed to. For some reason, I had a natural immunity to morphine. I had to wait 4 hours for the stuff to wear off before I could get something else. I had used Tylonel-3 in a previous hospital visit and I knew that stuff worked well on me. Feh. For some reason, the second one had me go home immediately after the operation (and I mean IMMEDIATELY.). The first time, they kept me overnight for observation.
Oh, and FTR, when I broke the arm if didn't hert that badly, it was practically black, but it felt like the pain was just from severe brusing, though I could barely move my arm... I went to class anyway, but got permission to skip to go to the doctor (this was an 8:00 class, and I had slipped on a piece of ice while checking my mail. Jackass with the salt came by 30 SECONDS later and said "Did you fall?", when I couldn't even get up on my own. Ass.). The on-campus clinic was having a morning meeting, so they wouldn't let anyone in for 30 minutes. I was asked if it was an emergency. Not being psychic, I didn't know and had to wait :|