Costochondritis is a very long word

Today was Day 16 of radiation. I should be farther ahead but one day the machine was down, and yesterday I spent half the day in the emergency room so I didn't have my appointment yesterday either.

Yesterday, when I woke up, my chest was hurting me. As I rolled over, it hurt even worse. I tried a bath to see if that would help - nope. Laid back down in bed and it hurt even worse. I was texting with Taylor and told him what was going on. His roommate's father is a radiation oncologist and he asked him to give me a call. I put a call into my own doctor but heard from Dr. Muff first. He assured me that whatever it was, it most likely was not because of the radiation and that my doctor would probably tell me to either go see my primary doctor or go to the er. He suggested just going to the er as there were tests they would need to run that wouldn't be available to me at my doctor's office. A few minutes later, my doctor's office called and said precisely what Dr. Muff said they would. My primary doctor wouldn't even be in for a couple of hours, so Tyler and I headed to the hospital.

The ride there was bumpy, and each time the car bounced it sent more pain shooting through my chest.  We walked into a packed waiting room, but triage went quickly and included an EKG, a blood test and insertion of an IV - just in case it was needed. They said my EKG was perfect, and therefore ruled out a heart attack.
We hung out in the waiting room for quite a while before they called me in.

Once in a room they hooked me up to all those wonderful contraptions and AFTER asking what side my breast cancer was on (left) they put the blood pressure cuff on my left arm....which they aren't supposed to, but did anyway because they had the IV in my right arm.

They had originally ordered a chest x-ray, but once the doctor checked me out, she said she wanted a cat scan with contrast instead. Her concern was a pulmonary embolism - aka a blood clot.

They took me for the test and about an hour later they told me that too was clear. When the doctor came back, she told me I had inflammation of the chest wall, a side effect of the radiation therapy. They had given me a medication for the inflammation and it had helped immensely. So, since everything else was clear, they wrote me a prescription for 600 mg of ibuprofen and sent me home.

This morning I went to work, then afterwards to radiation and then into see my radiation oncologist. He had a little information about what was going on, so after I went over everything with him he told me that no, this had nothing to do with the radiation as that area is not even being radiated. He did say it could possibly be a strain. If it doesn't get better in a week, then we know its not a strain, but costochondritis instead. So for now we wait and see what happens. He is concerned with the "why" did this happen now. It could be a side effect from the infection I had. It could be something else. Since I have Anklyosing Spondalitis, Rheumatoid Arthritis and I am a carrier of Lupus, if the pain doesn't go away in a week then he is going to order a bunch more testing to check for auto immune diseases since cancer has a way of changing a person's physiology.

He was upset that the er doc blamed the radiation and he was not at all happy that not only did they put the blood pressure cuff on my left arm, they took blood out of it as well, and guess what? Once again, bruises all over my arm where the blood pressure cuff was. I had told them it was too tight, it was hurting too much, I  loudly yelled "f***" at one point.  I even took it off  but they put it right back on, as if I hadn't said a word. I guess from now on I just plain get combative when they come at me with a blood pressure cuff. I don't know why this is suddenly an issue either. I've never had that problem before and now it's happened twice in less than a week. Doc says we need to look into that as well.

I still have a lot of radiation to go, at least 19 more times - I'm almost to the halfway point. The burning and itching is aggravating, but nothing compared to the other "stuff" that seems to keep popping up. Highly looking forward to the day when all of this is behind me.