Chest, abdominal and back pain. Any ideas why?

Treatment and medication
1

Hi Everyone

Hoping someone might be able to shed some light on some recent pains I've been getting, and what could be causing them. Just so you know I've been diagnosed with Fibromyalgia, CFS/ME, Anxiety and IBS. I'm also currently under investigation for Crohn's Disease of the small bowel, following 2 separate positive faecal calprotectin tests. Ulcerative Colitis has been ruled out following a colonoscopy with biopsies a few months ago revealed my colon, rectum and terminal ileum all looked healthy and biopsies were normal. Doctor also said it was unlikely I had Crohn's either as my colon, particularly my terminal ileum, look very healthy and normal, however a small bowel MRI has been booked.

Anyway, a few days ago I leant over to pick something up and had a sudden, sharp, quite intense pain around the left side of my back, half way down, around lower rib area. The pain eased almost immediately but has turned into what is best described as a band of dull, achy pain, that hurts more during movement, right across the middle of my back radiating through to the top of my stomach. I now feel this whole area is very tender. On top of that the sharp pain seems to have triggered a lot of random pains, bloating, burping and churning of my stomach and bowels, and I feel like my chest and throat are being affected too, with random sharpish pains. The pains are not always there either, other than the band of pain going across my back and top of abdomen, which varies in pain level during movement, but generally feels sore, tender and tight. Other than that everything else seems fine, my heart rate, oxygen levels, blood pressure, temperature are all fine, no nausea, vomitting, diarrhoea. I do get constipation with my IBS, but nothing seemed unusual with the bowel movement I had yesterday. I'm not in agony, but I am in quite a bit of discomfort. Something is telling me I trapped a nerve, or bruised an organ internally when I reached over to pick something up and got the sharp pain in my back, and that has in turn triggered a Fibromyalgia, CFS/ME or IBS attack. Incidentally, lying on the side where I got the initial sharp pain, or on my front, seems to alleviate the pain I'm currently in.

If anyone has any thoughts on what this could be, or anything else I need to be looking out for I'd be grateful to hear them. I would go to the doctor, but as my vitals are all fine and I'm not in severe pain, just a lot of discomfort, I can guarantee they will blame it on my Fibro, CFS and/or IBS diagnosis, and end up telling me to take some painkillers, which I have but don't seem to touch the pain.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts, and many thanks in advance.

2

I just hate it when a doctor jumps to the conclusion that it's caused by one of my medicines I'm on or some other condition I have. It's just a closed mind kind of attitude and they don't want to invest get it at all.

I do have one thing I'm wondering if it is and it's because it happened to me. But the difference between yours and mine is that mine hurt really really bad. In fact it was the worst pain I ever had including child birth. However I think that what I had can also be a lot less painful as it is in your case. So what I'm telling you is that it might be a pulled intercoastal muscle. The intercostal muscles are between each rib and they hold the ribs together but still allow them to expand when you take a deep breath. In my case it was in my lower ribs and wrapped around to my back. It lasted about a month-and-a-half and like I said I was in pure misery. I went to see my pain management doctor and we scheduled a nerve block so I wouldn't feel the pain. However I never got it because I had to wait until I had been off my blood thinners for 10 days before they would agree to do it. And I had waited so long to go to see them (they were my 5th doctor I saw about this problem) that my problem resolved before the end of the 10 days. I had every Tom, Dick and Harry telling me it was a pulled muscle but nobody explained it to me like my pain management doctor did. And most of the doctors I saw didn't treat it with the exception of one. He put me on gabapentin and prednisone. And that might have been what help my pain in the end I just don't know. I wish you luck and I hope you get this resolved soon. And good luck with your doctor's.

BTW I know what CFS stands for but what is the ME that you have behind that acronym.

3

Many thanks for your reply.

ME stands for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, which is basically the proper medical term for CFS.

Reading your description of pulled intercoastal muscle was very interesting, and I do have to say the initial pain felt like a torn or pulled muscle, ligament or tendon, something like that anyway. I have a feeling that due to extreme bloating my stomach was pushing against various organs, which in turn could well have been adding pressure and stretching my rib cage, and the action of that one move I made with my left arm, aggravated something around my left, rear rib area. Odd thing is the pain has now nearly gone, I can only feel very mild discomfort from around that area. Very strange indeed, as if I had pulled a muscle I would have expected it to hurt for longer than it has.

Many thanks for your comments, much appreciated.