Pain in my rib cage

[Rico2323]

Doctors cannot tell me nothing I've been hospitalized for and they will not give me the medicine to treat this my left side rib cage it's very painful at times I don't know what to do anybody tell me anything doctors go to school but they don't know s*** excuse me how I feel about this I really don't know anybody else is going through it I want put this on my worst enemy so can anybody tell me anything what is this and what can I do for it

[Paul_Howard Partner LUPUS UK]

Hi Rico2323,

Do you have a diagnosis of lupus? Are you on any treatment for that at the moment?

[Hidden]

If you have lupus a common diagnosis would be pleuritis and/or pericarditis. Treatment would typically be colchicine and high dose aspirin.

[MargaretGail]

It sounds like what I get Costochondritis - inflammation of the rib cage. It hurts like hell.

[LynnyJ]

I had similar a couple of years ago and my lupus specialist told me it was costochronditis - inflammation of the liking around the rib cage - very painful & I think I had to take some anti-inflammatories for a short period of time to help heal. Good luck, don't envy you that pain x

[sarahsch]

Hi Rico2323, I had pain in the left lung which left me in a lot of pain, short of breath and unable to breath in full, this was caused by an undiagnosed lung infection which I unfortunately get regularly over winter. It took 18 months to get treatment. Eventually I worked out what was wrong & visited the emergency GP, told him what was wrong & he agreed & treated. My chest infections don't present like a classic chest infections, I rarely cough except first thing in morning when I cough up phlegm. Pain & inflammation seems out of proportion with severity of infection. Do you recognise any of this?

[_Lori-el in reply to sarahsch]

Hi Sarahsch, These types of infections are very hard to recognise and may also turn into what they call Community Pneumonia. It's one you can have and barely discern as Pneumonia and get an ambulance or it can be an onset that you don't realise your ill cause it makes you sleep all the while you have  raging temperature and your delirious so you are too out of it to know. Luckily I actually had one incident with diarrhoea, one of which ended up all over the floor. I'm only telling you this cause it made me phoe my son to help cause I couldn't clean it up. Still I didn't realise there was anything going on. When my son found me I was delirious and my breathing was so shallow he could hardly pick up on whether I was breathing or not.

Anyway I wanted to tell you that you can have treatment to build up your lung capacity and strength by a physiotherapist. Again a doctors referral is needed to go to one but if you can you should do it as it's very beneficial.

Hope this helps you a bit.

[sarahsch in reply to _Lori-el]

Thanks Lori-el, that's a real thoughtful and useful reply. Sarah

[_Lori-el]

Rico2323, I do not suffer from what you do but I will tell you this, DON'T let the doctors dictate or bully you. It's your right to be told what's going on. You have the right to see or have a copy of your test results even if they are X-rays you are entitled. I don't care if the hospital has foot the bill they are still your results.

I recently told someone online the virtually same thing but theirs was a medical procedure. I told this person to demand an endoscopy to make sure the person received this procedure. Turned out it was needed and was in for urgent surgery. The GP wouldn't give a referral so this person went to another GP and the referral was given and the outcome was a lump in the vascular in the throat. Could've been a death sentence. 

Shame on that doctor! Told this person to go back to that GP, when well again and tell him/her this person could have had a life threatening illness. It was really but we hope the surgery was done in time. So, jump up and down or stand on your head if you have to, to get the attention you deserve.

Hope this helps on that front anyway.