Chronic Pain

I am terrified to admit that I might have chronic pain. I don't want this to be my life.

But let me back up.

I am 28, have a wonderful husband of five years, a house full of rescued animals, a new job that I love, and dear friends who care about me. In many ways I am so lucky.

In December 2005 I started coughing. My first doctor diagnosed viral bronchitis. The second doctor confirmed. The third doctor (five weeks later) said it was whooping cough. After three months, I was put on disability because I would cough hard continuously for hours. They never really figured out what was wrong, despite every single test you can imagine. Apparently, I am the picture of pulmonary health.

A year later, we found that Allegra keeps the cough under control, though I do not test as being the least bit allergic to anything.

During the second month of the cough, I developed severe chest pain. It feels like someone has taken a baseball bat to the inside of my ribcage--all the way around. I was on dilaudid for the cough at that point, but was still in pain. The doctors said that I had pulled or torn muscles in my chest, and they would heal when the cough went away. Considering that I haven't coughed since last December, and the pain is a constant companion, I think they got it wrong.

I have been through batteries of tests, and everything seems perfect. Even my Crohn's and endometriosis are mostly under control. They have tried steroid shots, which caused excruciating pain and left a large indentation in my chest, lidocaine patches, and ketoprofen cream. Nothing helps. My spinal MRI was completely clean. I had a couple of chest CTs when the cough was bad, and they were fine also. I'm sure that it won't come as too much of a shock that I've had at least 5 doctors (not counting ER docs) in the last year throw up their hands and claim that there just wasn't anything else they could think of to do for me. I currently have a rheumatologist who seems slightly more interested in helping me, but it takes forever for her to do anything, and nothing has helped yet. She thinks it's costochondritis, but it didn't respond to the steroid injections, and the radiologists who did the injections say that the pain pattern isn't right.

Everything I do or don't do hurts. It hurts to breathe. It hurts to move. It hurts to think about the pain, but I can't avoid it. I can't hide the pain at work any more. I'm trying so hard to have a normal life, but everything revolves around the pain.

I am currently on 350-450 mg of Tramadol a day. It barely cuts the pain at this point. I think I could take double and still not have a moment pain-free. There is a history of drug addiction in my family, so I have to be extremely vigilant about everything that I put into my body.

I'm sorry to go on so long. I just have to get this out where somebody understands what's happening to me. My husband tries his best, but I still feel so alone sometimes.

Does anyone have any advice? Things I can ask my doctors? Tests? Has anybody heard of this kind of pain?

If you've gotten all the way to the end of this post, thank you! It helps just knowing that someone is reading this.

Katie

Hi Katie,

Welcome to the ChronicPainConnection forum. We're glad to have you join us but sorry that you have a reason to need to be here. Although I don't know much about the type of chest pain you describe, I can certainly empathize with you when it comes to living in chronic pain. (I have fibromyalgia.)

In trying to find something that might help you, I went to our "Check a Symptom" feature, clicked on some of the symptoms you described and came across this paragraph:

"The most common causes of chest pain that gets worse with deep breathing (called pleuritic chest pain) are a pulled muscle in the chest wall, inflammation of the joints between the ribs and other bones in the chest area, a rib injury, irritation of the lining around the lung or heart and an infection such as bronchitis or pneumonia. Less commonly, pleuritic chest pain is caused by a partially collapsed lung called a pneumothorax or blood clots in the lung (pulmonary emboli)."

Of course, it would be far better and more accurate for you to go through "Check a Symptom" yourself since I may have misinterpreted something. You can also go further into the symptom process than I did. Hopefully doing this will at least give you a few new ideas that you can ask your doctor to check out.

Also, if it's any encouragement, rheumatologists tend to be good diagnosticians, so even though she's slow, hopefully she'll be able to pinpoint the problem soon.

I do wish you the best as you seek to find out what is causing your pain. Please keep in touch with us and let us know how you are doing. We're here if you need a friend to talk to or just need to vent your frustrations. We've all been there!

Thank you for checking out my symptoms! I've had doctors who aren't even that interested in me--I'm sure we can all say that.

The website and my rheumatologist are on the same page. She's currently working on the assumption that I have torn the cartilage in my rib cage and it has been further inflamed by my breathing constantly.

Gee, if only I could stop breathing, then maybe I'd heal.

Glad I could be of some help. I can sympathize with the rib cage pain. I was in a serious accident several years ago in which a lot of the cartilage around my rib cage was torn. Although that was probably the least serious of my injuries, it was by far the most painful. Like you said, I guess it was that pesky breathing habit making it worse! I did eventually heal, though.

I hope your rheumatologist is able to come up with something that will help you to heal soon. Please keep in touch and let me know how you're doing.