Sometimes yes, sometimes no - it's just a hazard that comes with it, I've not died yet only been in a little bit of uncomfortable pain so nothin' too bad! :D My motto is usually "if it's uncomfortable, it'll be an interesting picture"

I'm gonna answer this one here because it needs a pic demonstration! :)
This is the last wedding pic I edited - here you have a completely unedited version, a desaturated unedited version and then the final product.
http://twitpic.com/4eomwq

The coloured lines I drew on represent how I would edit this image.
I make a selection (each selection is a different colour) and feather it by about 500-700px. I would then adjust the curves of that particular selection until I liked the way it looked. There's no preset curve I use, just a case of pulling it different ways until I like how that section looks.

In this image, I started with the red section -
I wanted this quite deep and powerful because he's the main focus in the image. I selected his face/her back as well as his jacket because they share a similar grey tone. I didn't select her hair because I knew I'd be darkening the selection - her hair was already dark, and that would just make it far too underexposed.

When I was happy with the red section, I moved onto the background - blue section.
Because this area is close to the focal subject, there needed to be a contrast between his face and then slowly darken out.

Yellow section (bottom left)-
I always leave the darker areas till last, so I then adjusted the curves of the yellow section until it blended well with the other edited sections around it.

Pink section (bottom left) -
Now i had it blended tonally, I selected the rest of the section to make sure all the blacks were similar.

(repeat with other yellow and pink section)

Then I moved onto the cyan section:
As you can see, I avoided the blacks as much as possible to avoid making it too "contrasty" and losing detail. I try and select things which share the same tonality.

And then finally - overall with the green section.

I applied sharpening and dodged her hair slightly, and voila!