I am 25/m from India.About 15 days back got into a situation and ended up screaming a little too much.I felt something snap inside my chest and within a few minutes , experienced something that felt like a heart attack.Now i'm 25 and otherwise quite fit.I drink only occasionally and have cut down on my smoking drastically,the habit in itself is a little more than a year old.And as this happened under a lot of stress (I was shouting and was emotionaly charged too at the time) I was willing to endure the pain rather than rush to a hospital.I looked up online and pain was described as angina , a pain similar to a heart attack but not one itself.I decided to see the night out and if the pain was still there the morning after to go see a doctor.I overslept the next day and felt better upon getting up.But the pain came back in a couple of hours.By now I knew it wasnt a cardiac attack.The images in my head of a cardiac attack are i guess too dramatic, and since there wasn't any great drama in my own condition, I ruled an attack out.Besides i kept telling myself that I am just 25 .But I guess the real reason was that I am uninsured , like everyone where I am from and the quality of medical care is abysmal.Anyway now because I wasnt able to find any sleep during the night and was sleeping through the day over the next few days,I was I guess procrastinating big time.My health started taking a beating as my biological clock went awry and my appetite went for a toss.I finally decided to visit a doc yesterday.
I was told he was a heart specialist and since I was thinking it was something in the chest anyway, you know a clot , hole in the lungs, fluid in the lungs or an aneurysm or something similar I decided to go see him.Now when I was 15 I tore the cartilage in my shoulder playing cricket and remembered that pain .And this pain too over the last 10-15 days has settled in to a similar pain .Anyway I go up to him, I give him the background , he straight away presses with his index finger and middle fingers the affected ribs,writes possible dry pleursy or tietze on the prescription's top left and tells me go get a few tests done.So i go and get a CBC, X ray and ECG done. He sees them and writes some medicines and sends me home.He doesn't tell me its tietze's , just that my heart and lungs are fine . tells me I have some swelling IN my ribs , that's all.
You all know what the pain is like.And ever since returning home yesterday , i have read all I could about tietze's because on the paper he cut dry pleursy with his pen and left tietze written.I have all the medication he wrote down and I have looked up their properties online.There are some antibiotics, anti - inflammatories and yes, deflazacort.None of these are solutions in their own right ,are just to see me through while hoping that the problem goes away.This is making me a little despondent .
Let me give you an idea how things are here.While he definitely is a good doctor, he didnt tell me anything about what i have been diagnosed with and how to deal with it, how to deal with the changes and what to expect, when would I be ok and return to an active life, will there be a relapse?
He asked me to come see him in 15 days,that all.
