Stabbing pain in shoulder blade and lung pain. Went to ER saturday. Bad emphysema.
Ever get atelectasis & splinting?
Most of the time atelectasis just means I can feel air moving “around” the collapsed areas of my lungs. But sometimes the collapse causes such crazy pain (feels, pain wise, like a collapsed lung) that my ribs & intercostals “splint” around the atelectasis, trying to protect it / support it… which then causes all kinds of weird pain as THOSE durn muscles cramp (feels like pleurisy. Nearly always? The
nerves involved either shoot up a shoulder blade, or right under my bra line).
The best fix I know of = opiates, ibuprofen, albuterol, & respiratory therapy (percussive esp for plugging).
((Steroids “should” work to lessen the inflammation, but for me that’s just borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, as corticosteroids make my belly swell, pressing on my lungs. Totally worth it for global inflammation, but localized around the area of collapse, just reduces how much air I can move as I lose about 1/3 of my lung volume from the internal pressure. IE if my lungs are 90% occluded? Steroids are great. 4% occluded? Snort. Nope! We’ve just made the situation worse, not better.))
With opiates I can usually sort myself in about 3 hours. Since everything is cascading from the pain response, remove that, and I can work everything out very effectively. I’ll keep a couple in a pocket over the next few days just to jump on top of any “cramp” I start feel burning, but often don’t have to use them. Without opiates I can usually clear the blockage in a few weeks, and then about another week to get the sore intercostals and inflammation down. Which isn’t bad, per se, I used to spend months all f*cked up before working wih a respiratory therapist. But I’m still a ginormous fan how freaking effective I can be by first turning the pain down. It’s a lot like stitching yourself up… it CAN be done without numbing the area first, but it’s a helluva lot easier to Novocain up.
