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What can cause a sharp pain either in my chest or right below it?
Digestive Health | Last Active: Aug 30 8:37pm | Replies (60)Comment receiving replies
Since around maybe September or October last year, I started having chest pain or pain somewhere below my chest. A few months before that during the summer, I felt a feeling of fullness right under my chest. The chest pain would come and go, but it’s still been coming and going four months later. Sometimes the pain radiates to my back, or it feels like the pain is in the same place on my front side as my back side, almost like if there was a line going through me, it’d connect the pain on my frontside and back. It seems like there’s days when I feel the pain and eventually I kind of get my mind of it, but when I feel the pain it worries me and I feel like something is really wrong.
Maybe around noon or so today, I felt the pain in my chest. Maybe half hour or an hour after feeling the pain, I started feeling a fullness right under my chest or kind of near my ribs. At times it’s felt like there’s pain or pressure near my sternum. I’ve also been constipated and I wonder if that has anything to do with this.
Do I need to go to the hospital for this though or go somewhere urgently? I’m feeling somewhat better now, but it scared me having the chest pain. This has happened before in the past and eventually has gotten better, but it hasn’t completely gone away. I have a doctors appointment this Thursday, but I don’t know if I need to do something sooner.
Replies to "Since around maybe September or October last year, I started having chest pain or pain somewhere..."
Hi,
Waiting it out doesn't seem to be working for you, emergency would be the best place to be right now. It could be as simple as trapped wind or something far more serious. The sooner you find out the sooner action can be taken.
Cheers
Heed everyone’s advice please. I had gallbladder pains years ago that felt like chest pains and radiated around the back..felt like a vise circling my midsection and that came on and off often with months in between. I let it go too but eventually had a scan and had it removed. You need to get diagnosed quickly and be prepared for a lot of testing…anxiety is not helping anything.
Good luck
FL Mary
@emilystewart30 a middle ground might be to call for a cancellation or immediate need appointment tomorrow at *:30 at your MD office, since it is already Sunday.
Exact feeling (pain under sternum,ribs on left side, swiveling around to the small of my back) I went to ER with acute pancreatitis!! Seems my pancreas was having trouble breaking down fat,,which kept a hard knot in my stomach,extreme constipation. Mine was caught early thankfully so I'm dealing with it at home. By all means get checked out!!
If you put a patch on the place that hurts when you apply pressure- lidocaine, or capcaisin, is there improvement? I also use Ben Gay or BioFreeze.
Hope you talk to a doctor soon!
Hello, Emily,
Just FYI, I have chronic constipation and occasionally have chest pain in the middle of my chest below the Xiphoid Process, at bottom of rib cage. One time it got so bad with squeezing pressure in my chest that my breath got shallow and it was difficult to swallow. I went to the ER, they did a cardiac catheterization, determined the heart was not the problem, and said it was a gastric problem. They gave me a prescription for nitroglycerin tablets, which I have rarely taken. I am doing better managing the constipation. Good Luck to you!
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I personally would go to the ER when this happens. Urgent care will probably send you to the ER anyway. Better to get checked while the pain is happening, I would think.
If you choose not to go to the ER, you could call the office early Monday and try to get in that day. The fact that the pain went away is good information (and hopeful).
But anytime anyone mentions chest pain, they end up in the ER in my experience. In fact, the ER tends to fast track you!