I was awoken this morning with sudden squeezing pain in my chest. It was a feeling I'd never had before, and I was instantly terrified. Heart Attack I thought? Never felt pain like that, all localize in the left side of my chest.
Went to the hospital and was admitted right away. Blood work and EKG done immediately. Waited a few hours on the EKG for collected data results. Three hours of laying on an emergency room gurney is stressful times, watching the time tick away, trying to rope in my imagination.
The emergency doc came and went through the results - healthy heart (EKG great, blood work great), healthy blood pressure, good vitamin count, cholesterol perfect, a bunch of other things also perfect - all tests were text book perfection. He said "I only wish I was as healthy as you."
So what happened? Apparently my rib popped out of the socket in my sternum, then popped itself back into place, hence the terrible squeezing type of pain in my chest as the rib slipped out and back into place. I basically had no idea that that was possible, but apparently this happens on occasion. My ribs had been through a lot due to a sever cause of bronchitis near pneumonia that lasted Nov through Jan where I was hacking up a lung most days. That took until two weeks ago to clear up, which may have contributed. Doc says I'll likely be tender in the chest for a couple weeks or so, but otherwise fine. He mentioned that most skeletons you see are inaccurate because they show the ribs and sternum as solidly connected. I certainly thought that was actually how the ribs worked until today. No idea it was possible to dislocate one.
I left the hospital feeling blissed out - that three hour wait on the gurney in the emergency room, I was taking some serious stock of my life. I've never been so happy to have a weird medical thingy happen to me. Nothing like fearing that the ticker is broken only to learn that it's working great. Still going to use this as another reason to take good care of myself though.