Hey darinfan, after all this discussion of costochondritis, it’s popped up for me again today! To be expected though, I have had a bad cold with a terrible cough for nearly two weeks… which has also lead to a delay in my Cimzia. For me it also changes and comes and goes, today it is a fairly mild but sharp-type pain just to the left of my breastbone, with an occasional mirroring sharp pain in my back. And I’m just about to finish a course of antibiotics, and my heart’s fine, so I better get my act together and start on some yoga. Hope yours is getting better!
The best way to describe mine in my chest is a very dull bruised/tender feeling when I sit in a certain position or move in a certain way. I think it started with a couple of short-lived night time “attacks” in my sleep, which woke me up, a few weeks back - and, who knows, what I have been assuming to be simply more frequent esophagus spasms could have been this all along! Tonight I was singing, and felt it when I was holding long notes etc, but not when actually taking a deep breath (not today, anyway). All of that points to it being costo, I guess. I also have back ache at the top of my back by the shoulder blades. Not unusual for me - but unusual for me to have it this long. I have a couple of ribs that are sore at the front if i touch them - but they seem to be different ones each day!
I spoke to the rheumy nurse today and started out asking her about chest ache/pain, and she said it happened but wasn’t common. So, I told her how the PsA had flared up - how it was back in my hands, my neck and my collar bone, and she changed her tune and said the chest pain/ache would fit with that. And, as she also said, I’d have to be unlucky to get the flare up AND something completely unrelated with my chest! I’m just glad I’ve pretty much talked myself out of thinking it was something not very nice related to ten years of reflux, but that’s the way my brain works, I’m afraid.
The nurse is going to speak to the doctor tomorrow to see if it’s ok for me to go back to two hydroxychloroquine a day. They cut it back to 1 in April as the Benapali was working so well but, as the nurse says, it would take several weeks for the amount of hydro in my system to lower, and then it would take a few more weeks, maybe even a month or two, for that to have an effect on the arthritis. They didn’t think the hydro had been contributing much, but the nurse said that it might have just been propping up the Benapali enough to get rid of these rather annoying symptoms. Fingers crossed that’s what’s going on.
OH YES!!! it is one of my favorite side effects of the PsA. When mine hits I get anxious and it makes it worse. Bronchitis is not going to help if you have been coughing. If you can take NSAIDS, that works. I can’t take enough of them to help much.
Oddly, I feel as if it’s affecting my breathing…but it actually isn’t, which sounds weird, I know. But I think it’s the tightness that gives you that feeling, and that weird little ball-in-the-back-of-the-throat feeling you get, too. And yet, I’m breathing fine and can hold my breath fine. It’s all a bit weird.
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Yep, all too familiar. Took me a while to work it out too.
It’s the weirdest thing that it can be there for a couple of hours and then just vanish. It’s quite freaky.
Yep, I felt that way too. Like the right feeling in my chest was being registered by my brain as “I can’t breathe”. This time around I’m better better at brain tricks, and have found doing three deep belly breaths every time “I can’t breathe” pops into my brain helps to pop it right out. And thank you @tamac for the NSAIDs suggestion, I can’t take them regularly (so had forgotten they were even in my arsenal) but can tolerate them for a short time - they are working wonders until I can take the Cimzia again, which I’ll be happy to do in the next couple of days unless things start to go backwards.
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It does sound familiar to me. I get costo often during flares, painful to breath and excrutiating to cough. I get pain wherevall my ribs attach as well as in thevsturnum…but sometimes it is not the chest pain that hurts to breath, i often get a “stitch” in my ribs…a hard to explain…kind of a pokey pain …like something in my chest is glued down and then pops…
Gosh you described that well Corrie - I get that ‘sticking’ stuff lots.