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Chest Pain And Fever/ Costochondritis?


cardiactec

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hey all,

i would have to say that i am a bit discouraged. for the past week i have been having severe intermittant chest pains and yesterday i started in with a fever of 101. i went to my primary care today and he said it's just costochondritis........? anyone heard of PULLED MUSCLES causing a fever of 101??? i havent.....hmmm....so i checked in with the cardio, just to let him know that i had seen my primary care for the pain/fever....since my cardio was out on vaca, another cardio called me (just called me) and said it doesnt sound cardiac........frustrating. is there like a viral thing going around or something?? argh, how frustrating....i am sure cardios get sick and tired of hearing 24 year olds call the office with "Chest pain"......cuz nobody ever thinks it's anything relating to heart if you are so young. either that or everything stems from the POTS.........what do you all do for chest pain? do you take any med? so so frustrated.

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Unlikely that it's just costochodritis... more likely that it's either plurisy or pneumonia. Not a doctor, just have lived through many episodes of pluritic pain and fevers. Docs who are in a hurry to shuffle you out don't always see the whole picture--and younger patients tend to get the big brush off even faster b/c they figure we're "young and healthy" and just whining.

My gallbladder died off and if I'd not had it out, I'd have gotten gangrenous in a matter of days when I was 30, but it started SIX years earlier--and I must have had multiple infections all along and I suffered attacks of billiary collic and gallbladder attacks that whole time. It was sheer torture. My surgeon told me my gall bladder was smaller than my littlest finger and so scarred up that it was barely a gallbladder anymore. It's supposed to be about the size of small banana.

Trust your "gut" feeling and seek another opinion if you think the doc is wrong. I have had costochondritis--but only AFTER being misdiagnosed and getting pneumonia, then coughing myself into some terrible chest pain. Shots of steroids and lidocaine helped for a few days at a time.

Nina

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I agree If you think it may be more, keep pushing the doctors. I know being young you do get the brush off, and there there's we have no idea whats wrong with you sp we are going to say you will be fine, or maybe your depressed. I been there and done that hole thing. I have found out when I know something is wrong I have always found that there was it just some times takes a while to get a doctro to listen or to get to the bottom of it.

I hope you start feeling better soon! :)

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hi there, i did actually go in to my primary's office today. was going to put it off until i started in with the fever last night which has been waxing and waning all day. last night my temp was 101. this am in the docs office only 99.4 and now is 100.....i feel pretty aweful. they did an ekg in the office and must have messed it up or something cuz they want me back in the office tomorrow for another ekg.......anyway, the one they did today didnt show any changes from my previous ekg's........i seriously thought i had pericarditis or something cuz it feels like a friction rub in the middle of my chest.....the doc didnt order any bloodwork and no chest x-ray. i wasnt impressed. he just listed to the lungs and said they sounded clear.......so i guess that is why he didnt order a chest x-ray.......but he still should have done some bloodwork!

i just know it's not costochondritis.....i havent had a fever in about 5 years......so this is way off for me....

funny you mention pleurisy. that is kinda what i was thinking. either that or pericarditis - but with pericarditis, nothing is showing on the ekg.......my mom's mom had pleurisy a lot due to lupus...

did they diagnose your pneumonia by just auscultation or did you have an actual chest x-ray to diagnose that...?

thanks AJVDK, i guess i'll just keep pounding the fluids and hopefully the pain/fever will go away that way since nobody else has a better idea for this....................the primary doc wanted to send me in to some D.O. on friday for "manipulation" on the "costochondritis". i passed on that! i told him i really didnt believe it was costochondritis because i have a fever with the pain! argh. PLUS, i never heard of anyone doing manipulation for costochondritis??

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I have the luxury of having live in health care :) my partner used to be a surgical tech on an open heart team at a major city hospital. She could hear the rubs. Plurisy is common in EDS patients btw. Anyway, the plurisy progressed, and I developed a constant fever of about 99 to 100, and over some weeks, I started having asthma attacks more and more frequenlty until the asthma is what put me in the hospital--you didn't need a stethoscope, when I breathed in, it was all like harmonicas.

While I was an inpatient, they did films in the ER, told me pleurisy, asthma and pneumonia--and the following day after head and chest CAT, I was also told I'd had a terrible sinus infection that probably was the start of the pneumonia or at least additive. I spent a good week as an inpatient on IV antibiotics--over the x-mas holidays. At least I didn't get a chance to have any arguments at the big family dinners! :(

I have had a partial lung collapse (atelectasis) also--another EDS treat. I was probably havintg plurisy beforehand, but I'm so accostomed to transient pains, I ignored it and ran a 5K road race last December for charity. I had chest pain afterward, which worsened over a period of a week or so--and then it became so bad that I went to the ER.

The funniest part is I was so loopy on morphine (thank heavens for that stuff that day!) that when I heard the radiologist reading my CAT scans while I was waiting in the hall, I thought he was talking about an old lady next to me-- I thought to myself, "wow, she has a collapsed lung--poor thing." HA! it was me. A few more doses of morphine, iv anti-inflamatories, and antibiotics to prevent infection...and instructions to breath more deeply :) I survived without a chest tube. Halelujia!

Nina

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