Rant: Finding a doctor

[Kelvrick]

Sometimes I get this pain in my chest. Something I get every once in a while that goes away in a couple of minutes. It is a sharp pain under my ribs, around the left nipple next to where you can feel the heartbeat. Feels almost like a bubble and pain increases when you breathe in or out too much. After a bit, it goes away or if you breath in sharply, it goes "pop" and is gone. From internet searching, I concluded it was one of these two conditions:

Precordial catch syndrome
Costochondritis

Anyway, this happened again on Saturday except instead of popping and going away when I breathed in, it would just hurt like a bitch. Kind of weird, so I decided to sleep it off. Sunday afternoon (around 3) I wake up and it is still there. Hmm, that sucks. So, I go get a haircut and costco, come home, get it on, take another nap and before I know it, it is 11. Do some laundry and go back to sleep.

Monday: Still there, wife says I better make a Dr's appointment. Gotta listen to wifey, so I start calling around. I've never been to a doctor in Sacramento aside from the emergency room so I gotta find one. Spend about 2 hours calling around and finally get an appointment with one guy for today, Wednesday at 2:30. Many were not taking new patients and one guy had the earliest appointment date as APRIL!

Of course I tell my superiors this and they ask if I'm sure I don't want to go to the emergency room. No, so they say the pain will probably be gone by the time Wednesday rolls around, or I'll be dead. Either way, no more pain.

Anyway, guess they were right. I owe one of them lunch.

EDIT: I've been meaning to find a primary care physician for a while now. Guess this was what I got for slacking off.

EDIT2: To make things clearer. I think I've had PCS before have shrugged it off and didn't know what I got last Saturday since it didn't go away as usual. Started looking for doctor after it hadn't gone away after 2 nights.

 

[DrawninwarD]

Yeah I used to get that a lot, and I know a lot of people that have it too. It still happens to me, but rarely now. For most people, precordial catch syndrome stops happening in their late 20s if they're ever afflicted by it (read that somewhere).

Whenever I had it, it wouldn't last for more than a few minutes. In one instance, it persisted for 10-15 minutes though.

 

[So]

Yeah, it sucks. I had to wait five weeks for a doctor's appointment for a similar reason.

 

[PingSpike]

Thankfully we don't live in a country with socialized medicine, where you have to wait a long time to get an appointment-hurrrrr.

I've had similar problems...its gotten so I just make an appointment the moment anything weird happens and then cancel it when it goes away.

 

[Kelvrick]

Yea, only thing that got me slightly worried this time was that it lasted days. Haven't had it in a while, maybe it was a build up for one last hurrah.

Originally posted by: PingSpike
Thankfully we don't live in a country with socialized medicine, where you have to wait a long time to get an appointment-hurrrrr.

I've had similar problems...its gotten so I just make an appointment the moment anything weird happens and then cancel it when it goes away.

Well, the doctor I ended up getting gives out his personal number for situations like that and I wasn't that worried, so I waited. I really like that fact.

EDIT: We got plenty of other options for immediate care that I didn't feel like paying the price for.

 

[PingSpike]

Oh a side note, I get something like this sometimes...maybe once every few weeks. It seems to most closely match the Precordial catch syndrome except the pain isn't intensified by breathing deeply and haven't ever really noted any sort of popping sensation when it went away. It feels sort of like muscle pain, or a pulled muscle though...it isn't ever very painful to me...just troubling since it does make you think you're having a heart attack. It always goes away before I reach any state of panic though.

 

[PieIsAwesome]

Originally posted by: Kelvrick

Precordial catch syndrome

Hey, thanks! I always wondered what those random episodes of pain I used to have were, and that little wiki entry describes exactly what I felt. I don't get them anymore but at least now I know that they were probably nothing serious.

 

[lokiju]

That's what the ER is for?

 

[EagleKeeper]

Originally posted by: lokiju
That's what the ER is for?

There are also plenty of Urgent Care facilites available.

Less stocked than an ER but you have a better chance of not waiting around for people who are in trama situationa to get handled first.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

The real question is if you actually have one of the conditions you linked to, what good is a doctor going to do?

Precordial catch syndrome: There is no known cure for PCS. However PCS is also not believed to be dangerous. Therefore PCS is generally not seen as a problem.
Costochondritis: Most cases of costochondritis have no apparent cause. In these cases, treatment focuses on easing your pain while you wait for costochondritis to resolve on its own.

At best, you'd get a couple Advil out of it. Not worth it for a $15 co-pay.

 

[Kelvrick]

Originally posted by: Atomic Playboy
The real question is if you actually have one of the conditions you linked to, what good is a doctor going to do?

Precordial catch syndrome: There is no known cure for PCS. However PCS is also not believed to be dangerous. Therefore PCS is generally not seen as a problem.
Costochondritis: Most cases of costochondritis have no apparent cause. In these cases, treatment focuses on easing your pain while you wait for costochondritis to resolve on its own.

At best, you'd get a couple Advil out of it. Not worth it for a $15 co-pay.

The doctor can tell me I have one of those 2 benign conditions.

For all I know, I have a failing heart valve or a lung infection that just happens to show similar symptoms. I trust my google-fu for something that lasts 10 minutes, not something that stuck around for 2 days. The piece of mind would be well worth $15 bucks in my opinion.

 

[Mo0o]

Better to have him at least take a chest x ray, who knows what it could be

 

[alkemyst]

Originally posted by: Common Courtesy

Originally posted by: lokiju
That's what the ER is for?

There are also plenty of Urgent Care facilites available.

Less stocked than an ER but you have a better chance of not waiting around for people who just have a common cold to get handled first.

fixed for accuracy.