posted by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
eftychia at 12:44pm on 2015-04-23
eftychia at 12:44pm on 2015-04-23What's going on with me, after last night's excitement:
The urgently-scary things have been ruled out. Not asthma, not pneumonia, not a heart attack, not a clot. The enlarged mediastinum on the x-ray was proved by the CAT scan to be an artifact of imaging angle or something. So it's not any of a whole bunch of things I didn't want it to be.
I still feel like I can't draw a really deep breath, like what breathing I can do requires an awful lot of effort. Still dizzy. Still falling asleep unexpectedly at odd times.
The discharge instructions say costochondritis -- inflammation of the cartilage joining ribs to breastbone (cause unknown but sometimes associated with stress?) ... leading to my not breathing right because each breath has to fight against the pain from the motion of breathing, I guess? Implying that the "muscles sore from working so hard to breathe" sensation there is really inflamed cartilage, cause instead of effect. (OT1H I don't remember the pain starting until the second day. OTOH fibromyalgia means I have such a steady diet of both background pains and up front distracting pains that maybe I could lose track of the timing of that. I dunno -- the diagnosis sounds plausible to me, but the ER doctor did not seem the least bit certain of it, and he'd said a few minutes earlier that (a) he was mystified but (b) I wasn't currently in the process of dying, and (c) I should follow up with a cardiologist and a pulmonologist in the next few weeks.
They sent me home with prescriptions for 800 mg ibuprofen 3x/day (but a verbal "no, don't take more" from the nurse when I pointed out that I already take 1g 2x/day) and 100 mg tramadol 1x/day (but I'm already taking 100 mg 2x/day, so I'll be asking my primary doctor whether taking it 3x/day is okay or I should just stick to 2x).
And then after Sheepie brought me home, I fell asleep before I could finish writing this followup post.
Anyhow, not immediately dying. I have more appointments to schedule (in addition to the house-repair estimates I need to schedule), I still feel crappy and insufficiently oxygenated, and I'm still not completely sure why. I'm currently feeling better than yesterday but worse than Monday.
The urgently-scary things have been ruled out. Not asthma, not pneumonia, not a heart attack, not a clot. The enlarged mediastinum on the x-ray was proved by the CAT scan to be an artifact of imaging angle or something. So it's not any of a whole bunch of things I didn't want it to be.
I still feel like I can't draw a really deep breath, like what breathing I can do requires an awful lot of effort. Still dizzy. Still falling asleep unexpectedly at odd times.
The discharge instructions say costochondritis -- inflammation of the cartilage joining ribs to breastbone (cause unknown but sometimes associated with stress?) ... leading to my not breathing right because each breath has to fight against the pain from the motion of breathing, I guess? Implying that the "muscles sore from working so hard to breathe" sensation there is really inflamed cartilage, cause instead of effect. (OT1H I don't remember the pain starting until the second day. OTOH fibromyalgia means I have such a steady diet of both background pains and up front distracting pains that maybe I could lose track of the timing of that. I dunno -- the diagnosis sounds plausible to me, but the ER doctor did not seem the least bit certain of it, and he'd said a few minutes earlier that (a) he was mystified but (b) I wasn't currently in the process of dying, and (c) I should follow up with a cardiologist and a pulmonologist in the next few weeks.
They sent me home with prescriptions for 800 mg ibuprofen 3x/day (but a verbal "no, don't take more" from the nurse when I pointed out that I already take 1g 2x/day) and 100 mg tramadol 1x/day (but I'm already taking 100 mg 2x/day, so I'll be asking my primary doctor whether taking it 3x/day is okay or I should just stick to 2x).
And then after Sheepie brought me home, I fell asleep before I could finish writing this followup post.
Anyhow, not immediately dying. I have more appointments to schedule (in addition to the house-repair estimates I need to schedule), I still feel crappy and insufficiently oxygenated, and I'm still not completely sure why. I'm currently feeling better than yesterday but worse than Monday.
(no subject)
(no subject)