Well, this is new! And it's not a cooking recipe.
To be fair I'm not 100% sure that's what's going on, but I'm 99% sure I've acquired 'Intercostal Muscle Strain which is something around that region. It can happen at any age, typically around 20-50 range, and from the comments I read, it was either sports injuries like jujitsu, or banal things like coughing too hard or closing a car door on a windy day... It can also knock you down for up to 8 weeks!
It's terrible.
...an injury to one or more muscles that run between the ribs. The intercostal muscles help to expand and contract the chest during breathing. Strains of these muscles can result in pain and discomfort with breathing, moving, or coughing.
It's like my herniated disks from years back in terms of initial sharp pain feelings and crippling disability. In a way, worse, because for most of yesterday, I couldn't breathe.
Like, I had to sit up at work with shoulders back hard. The moment I relaxed, it would feel like somebody put a sword into my lungs.
I was worried for a while but sufficient research proved to me it was nothing viral or bacterial, and certainly skeletomuscular. Still nasty and painful but survivable.
My commute home was the worst. By the time I got within minutes of my home I was really struggling to breath every breath. I felt it getting worse through the day, and by the time I got to my bed, there was no comfortable position where I could lie down and breathe without agony, except one narrow range of lying on my left shoulder, mostly belly facing down. Any other possible position was suffocating agony.
Naturally the following night was relatively harrowing but I had taken plenty of ibuprofen which got me through, and I started to semi-consciously feel recovery as I managed to lie on my belly, and roll slightly more towards lying on my back over many hours.
By the time I fully woke up - after noon! - I was feeling a bit of pain but relatively sorted. Enough to go for a walk, but with a constant dull pain if I breathed in too much. Then I foolishly did a couple of chores and I regressed back to even worse pain and zero positions of comfort and breathing. Doh.
Interestingly, this pain started to stretch from my lower rib right up to the top of my shoulders and neck, something called referred pain, as it connects the nerves which decide to pass the pain around a bit.
Lying still for ages and more ibuprofen has sorted it out for now.
But damn. I seriously wonder if all my injuries are connected. I'm actually quite confident that they are. I think it all started with my toe in my late 20's and it has had rippling negative effects ever since. Needs some research I reckon!
But yeah I'm doing alright now.
No pain no gain (pretty sure this is the exact context that idiom is used).
No pain, no oxygen gain. I've had this before. It certainly isn't fun. Tomorrow I am going to go bench press something like 70KG to hope that it won't happen again. Since I have become a gym rat with an addiction to endorphins, so much else of life just feels like easy mode compared to those around me.
Though, those around me are sometimes labouring under the misapprehension that everything isn't a contest, when it so easily could. But that wouldn't be very dull.
God I wish I could become addicted. All my trials at the gym just end when it's too hot, too cold. I can't stand walking to the gym in 35C weather, to then sweat on purpose, and when fully ready to die from heat exhaustion, go back out into 35C to go home. Nothing can override that terrible feeling (even though I admit the good feels were rolling in).
Intercostals generally don't cause pain for no particular reason but they can go into spasm because larger muscles are pulling them out of alignment. The weird thing about our bodies is that a lot of muscles have only motor nerves, not sensory nerves so we are unaware of it until the joints or attachments start complaining. Can you see a physio about loosening up your serratus anterior muscles? Those are big culprits in intercostal pain and spasm
I don't particularly trust the medical services here in China if I can help it. In this case, they'll almost certainly give me Traditional herbal medicine or acupuncture which I just don't buy into. Failing that, painkillers which I already have.
I'm a little less sure the intercostal thing is the accurate description now but your 'serratus anterior muscles' looks more locally accurate! Especially last night where the strain kind of migrated round the back making sleep way more difficult. (overall, things have improved though)
Yup. I broke some ribs in a bike accident and that altered the action of my serratus anterior muscle so I know all about stabbing pains between the ribs. Google scapular mobilisation videos and see if doing those exercises and stretches helps you
Thanks! Always good to get advice from those more unfortunately experienced than myself haha. I cringe at the very thought of a broken bone, let alone ribs... I've gotten away with it so far in life.
Woke up today feeling better but I suspect its the painkillers from last night still having an effect. I guess we'll see! Then the recuperation stretches begin -__-
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