After my last post I went for a nice 30 minute walk around my neighborhood. It was a bit breezier than I thought it would be and of course I forgot to put on my hat or anything to cover my ears. But I really enjoyed getting outside. I've had to hibernate all winter because of the asthma/bronchitis/pneumonia episodes.
Anyway, during my last big round of being sick I coughed a lot. I mean forceful, difficult to breath bouts of coughing. The kind that keeps you up all night and have to sleep propped up. One weekend, during one of those coughing episodes, I felt, and heard, a pop in my left chest. It was quite painful. The next day, it happend to the right side, but worse. Since then, I've had continuous pain whenever I cough, sneeze, raise my arms, or basically just move. Some days it hurt more than others. Last weekend, however, I was feeling pretty good, no coughing and very little pain, so I assumed whatever it was that caused the pain was going away. Unfortunately, this past week the pain got worse and the coughing was coming back.
On Friday I couldn't stand the pain anymore, and worrying that maybe I had cracked a few ribs from the coughing (a co-worker had that happen when she had bronchitis), I called my doctor to see if I could get in. Fortunately, he had an opening. After describing to him the popping that caused the pain, and him pressing on my chest (and having to peel me off the ceiling because it hurt so bad) and the sides of my rib cage, he determined the ribs aren't fractured, but thought I might have a collapsed lung. So, he sent me to get a chest x-ray. Luckily, it isn't a collapsed lung or craked ribs. The pain is from strained chest muscles and sprained ligaments and cartilage between the rib bones.
I was given three prescriptions - an antibiotic for the bronchitis that hasn't completely cleared up, a narcotic pain reliever for the chest pain and an anti-inflammatory for the inflamation of the chest muscles and ligaments. The pain reliever makes knocks me out for a few hours. I don't know how I'm going to work while taking it.
So, needless to say, I'm not able to do the C25K training that I was hoping to start today. I'll just keep walking on my treadmill and hopefully outside a little now that the temperatures are above freezing. Wednesday it's suppose to be sunny and a high of 55!
I will be a runner some day - just not this day.
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2 comments:
Hi Pat,
Believe me when I say I feel for you. I actually did crack ribs (3 different times) from coughing...before my asthma was gotten under control. Sounds like we have a very similar type of asthma! Let's encourage each other through all this...you will be a runner, I know it...if I can do it you can do it! :)
BTW, if you haven't already, check out "my first post", you can get to it easily on my sidebar under "Other things you might like to read"...it'll give you a bit of a summary of how I got to this point. :)
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