I had rheumatic fever when I was ten and that was remarkably painful, it took me a year of physiotherapy to learn to walk again. For the first year after, I wasn't even allowed to walk upstairs because of the effect on my heart. I got through that because my parents didn't let me give up and I didn't want to disappoint them.
When I was twenty eight, I developed two dozen stomach ulcers. No big deal now, just some antibiotics will cure it but they didn't know that then. I lost a third of my body weight from just over 9 Stone (130 Pounds) to just over 6 Stones (88 Pounds). I spent about two years lying on the bathroom floor being sick.I had some great treatment from the NHS by a leading expert in the field but nothing helped. In the end, all they could offer me was an operation to sever some gastric nerves, the side-effect of which was that I'd lose another Stone in weight, which I knew I couldn't survive, so I refused and they more or less told me that the ulcers would perforate and that I'd die from blood-poisoning. Eventually, out of sheer desperation, I tried acupuncture and it began to work immediately. My intestines, which had ceased to work at all, gurgled and began slowly to recover. After another two years on top of the three years I'd had the ulcers, I had more or less recovered. I got through it because I had no other choice and I didn't want to die.
At the age of 45, I caught a really bad dose of 'flu but contracted Pneumonia as a secondary infection. Probably the most intense pain I've ever experienced and that's against some stiff competition
I did some cursing that day, it must have sounded like the worst rap record ever.
Again, saved by the NHS. Plenty of morphine and oxygen. A fortnight in Hospital on antibiotics and I was just left with some scarring to one of my lungs. Of course, I was as weak as a kitten for several months afterwards and had to rely on food deliveries etc. I suppose the moral of the story is that everyone should have medical care like the NHS, which you pay a tax called National Insurance for but is free at the point of use no matter what it costs to treat you.