It still hurts

Well, on Wednesday morning I woke up with pain in my back (behind my lungs), but it went away after a little while, so I just assumed that I'd slept funny, and got on with my day (including half an hour on the treadmill). That evening the pain came back in my back, and across my chest too, and got worse as the evening went on. I wasn't too worried about it, as I just assumed that it was the pleurisy pain that the doctors kept asking me if I had. I took paracetamol and took myself off to bed.

Thursday morning I woke up with the pain still, and I'd already decided it would be a good idea to right the doctor and she if he could fit me in. The doctor I've seen the last few times wasn't on call, and they actually weren't able to fit me in for an appointment. However, they said that they'd get a doctor to give me a call back. The doctor that called was the one who prescribed me the steroids a few weeks back, so at least he knew a little bit of my case history. He seemed a bit put out that the steroids hadn't worked! Anyway, he told me that he wanted me to go to the walk-in centre at my local hospital to get a chest x-ray done. So off I went.

They've changed it all around since I was last there, but I think they assess you when you go in, and decide if you need to go through to A&E (like ER) or whether you should me seen by someone in the GP clinic. They put me through to the GP clinic first of all, and I saw a doctor there. After telling my history, and him listening to my chest, he told me that he was pretty sure that I didn't have a collapsed lung,or anything like that, but that he would refer me through to A&E if I wanted to, or he would let me go home. Having already been there about an hour, I thought I might as well go on through for the chest x-ray, cos they might be able to point to something causing the pain that couldn't be heard so well, but showed up on the x-ray.

Ok, better speed up the story cos it's getting long. They did urine and blood tests, and an ECG to check I wasn't having a heart attack. They also did the chest x-ray and a physical examination. And basically most things came back clear - I wasn't having a heart attack, the blood results showed no signs of clots. So it came down to just being swelling where the ribcage and muscles meet - which would explain why I have it front and back. It's the sort of thing that occurs when infection gets in, and the fact that I have this constant cough won't be doing anything to help it.

I'm allergic to ibuprofen, so all I can take is paracetamol. Which doesn't seem to do a lot for it. So I've pretty much been in pain all day, and spent much of it feeling dizzy and exhausted too. I'm basically just taking it easy, and hoping the pain will go away soon. I'll keep you posted.