the chest x-ray story, ch 3
Since sometime Sunday afternoon, I thought I had pulled a muscle. It doesn’t hurt if I’m just sitting or not moving. If I decide I want to, oh, BREATHE, then it decides to feel like someone jabbing a dull garden hoe into my rib cage. In other words, it’s not pleasant.
I talked to my Gym Buddy™ again this morning and he figured it wouldn’t hurt to have it checked out. With only a $15 co-pay, it’s hard to turn that down. I left work early and went into urgent care, since it usually takes two weeks to make an actual appointment with any doctor there.
I explained the symptoms to the LPN that took down my vitals. She tried to convince me I had a cold and it just hurt from coughing. After I gave her the number of reasons why I knew it wasn’t a cold, she finally put me into a room to wait for the doctor. The doctor listened to me take some huge breaths and said she couldn’t heard anything in my lungs, so that would rule out pneumonia. THANKS, GENIUS.
She explained to me the muscles that were around that area. Thanks, I know. Then, she decided that I might have pleurisy, but she wanted me to get some x-rays to rule out a cracked rib. This time, the x-rays came out fine, and let me tell ya – there’s nothing to top off the end of your day then staring at your rib cage and other various organs on a huge computer monitor. I kinda wanted copies of them. This is also the third chest x-ray I’ve had done in a six month time period.
The final diagnosis is either a pulled latissimus dorsi or pleurisy, but she wasn’t sure which. She gave me five days worth of an anti-inflammatory (prednisolone, to be exact), which will allegedly help with either one of the scenarios.
Whatever. I’m missing a softball practice and paintball because of it, not to mention the workouts I could be getting in. Frustrating, indeed.
