Fibrmyalgia and Chest Wall Pain

Fibromyalgia and Chest Wall Pain

by Marilyn Mackenzie

I was so excited today.  There in my email inbox was a message about chest wall pain.  I know that someone in my connections, someone with fibromyalgia, was lamenting this symptom just the other day.  How great if I could post an answer.

Right.

Here's what the email said:

"Chest pain is treated with a sense of urgency by both doctors and patients, and due to the scary nature of chest pain, it frequently prompts a visit to the emergency room. Unfortunately, as soon as it is confirmed that your pain is not caused by heart trouble, a physician’s interest may dwindle rapidly. Sure, you should feel comforted that your heart is okay, but the negative test results have not taken the edge off of your pain.

Two important chest wall muscles can mimic a heart attack, but little is written in the medical journals about the muscular causes of chest discomfort. In fact, non-cardiac chest pain is often trivialized, and the patients who have this type of pain are psychoanalyzed in the very journals that physicians rely upon for keeping their skills current. Has standard medical evaluation for your chest pain left you dead-ended? Do you also have any of the other symptoms below?

• You get a sharp pain in the chest every time you take a deep breath, and the harder you try to breathe, the more difficult it becomes. Exhaustive lung work-up reveals that your lungs are fine.
• You feel intense pain in the arm pit and hard-to-move shoulder, but there is no evidence of arthritis in the neck or a pinched nerve, although it feels that way.
• Your breast tissue hurts and although you initially conjure up concerns about breast cancer, a mammogram says otherwise."

Okay.  The good news is that, obviously, if you're a fibro sufferer with chest wall pain, you're not alone.

The bad news is that in order to read what to do about it you have to join Fibromyalgia Network.  I don't know about you, but I cannot afford all of the fibro magazines or memberships to a bunch of fibro groups.

Perhaps we can pool our resources, though.  Are any of you already members of Fibromyalgia Network?  If so, the rest of the chest wall story is in the July, issue.  If not, they're giving new members that issue for free with their new membership.  Looks like they also give out a list of the top 25 meds prescribed for FMS/CFS with membership. 

Grrr.  And here I thought I had a few answers.  It is good to know that it's not a strange thing to happen to fibro patients.  I had the chest wall pain for a while.  Unfortunately, I really don't remember what we did to get rid of it.

I have inflammation and pain in my digestive tract all the time.  For that, I have a muscle relaxer that is specifically for relaxing muscles that are not skeletal.  Most likely, that's what they prescribed for the chest wall pain too.