Chest Pain?

[kshull13]

Hello!

Just wanted to know if chest pain is a common symptom for anyone?

The past few days I haven't had much tightness, but have started having some chest pain-- it isn't constant, but is kind of a dull soreness or ache. This happened last month too, and when I went into see my specialist, she wasn't worried at all and said it is a common symptom when your asthma is acting up. I had been pretty worried as this hadn't happened to me before.

Once she added more meds (doubling my Flixotide nebules to twice a day) my pain went away completely after three or so days. Once I was relatively asymptomatic, she started reducing my dosage again (to once a day). Now, my symptoms are back.

Does this mean I likely need to go back to my old dosage? She told me she is trusting me to begin to adjust my own meds to figure out what works for me.

I have a few questions:

1. Should I adjust my dosage of Flixotide back to twice a day everyday, or maybe twice a day just a few times a week?

2. I know I'm supposed to be on the lowest dosage of medicine that keeps me asymptomatic-- why is this? Are there bad side effects to using Flixotide in high doses long term?

3. Is it odd that my Peak Flow is still about the same, but I experience chest tightness/pain often? My peak flow is around 500 even when I am feeling the tightness. My personal best (which I rarely hit is about 520). My peak flow has NEVER gotten to lower than 80% of my personal best.

4. If I'm requiring this much medicine, does it mean I have severe asthma? I am currently on the following and still having symptoms:

MORNING:

Ventolin Nebules

Flixotide Nebule

AFTERNOON:

Striverdi Respimat (yellow 2 puffs)

EVENING:

Striverdi Respimat (green 1 puff)

What I was using that was helping was

MORNING:

Ventolin Nebules

Flixotide Nebule

AFTERNOON

Striverdi Respimat (yellow 2 puffs)

EVENING:

Striverdi Respimat (green 1 puff)

Ventolin Nebules

Flixotide Nebules

I don't think I need as much medicine as I was on during my bad flare, but am assuming something in between what I am on now and what I was taking before will help.

Any advice would be helpful-- thanks so much!

[EJS87]

I'm asthmatic and have been for 25 years now, I know when I was in my late teens I started getting chest pains and had no idea what was causing them and eventually I was told that it is something called costochondritis which is inflammation of the junctions of the cartilage where the joints are. For me it does flare up if my asthma is bad e.g. coughing a lot or a chest infection or asthma attacks. I find it is better if I take naproxen which is a NSAID similar to ibuprofen, I know a lot of asthmatics can't take either of those. Maybe ask your consultant about it and see what they think, in the meantime if you can tolerate it try using heat where it is hurting. Hope this helps.