Why Chest Pains Docs Always Say Not Related To Lungs

@picartist "Chest pain" is a pretty generic description. I have had chest pain caused by coughing, costochondritis, pleurisy, shortness of breath, arthritis, and undiagnosed coronary artery disease. They were all quite different.

Can you describe your pain? Local or generalized; front of chest, upper back or ribs; aching or sharp pain; what activities make it worse; better or worse in certain positions or at certain times of day? Once you are able to articulate this, it will be easier to find a doctor who can help.

It is probably muscle strain from coughing

Adding Gerd/reflux/heartburn to the list for potentially chest pain. I remember taking my MIL to ED for chest pain (she was worried it was a heart attack). Turned out to be "indigestion."

@sueinmn My pain hits on the right side or the left side and it is very painful. If I didn't know better I would be in an ambulance three or four days a week. My thought is the pain comes from coughing too much doing Huffs, etc.

@picartist When my MAC infection was very bad and I had not yet started on treatment, I also had chest pain. Mine was constant, behind left breast. Once I started antibiotics and got all symptoms under control it went away. No answers from doctors but it sure appeared to be connected to the MAC.

@picartist Well, I think you have diagnosed yourself. Huffs done correctly shouldn't be strong enough to cause pain, but coughing hard surely can irritate muscles and the lining between lungs and ribs. Maybe you can talk to your doc about "pain from coughing" and try to find a way to reduce severity.

One thing to note - in my early airway clearance days, I often had this issue. The golden advice I got from my pulmonologist's long time nurse was "back off" - it turned out my vigorous attempts to get rid of all the mucus was irritating my airways and causing even more, and more violent, coughing.

Here are a few of the bits of advice she gave me - Aim for 15-20 minutes MAX of airway clearance in a session - more is not necessarily better. Concentrate on deep breathing and huff coughs, try to stop deep coughing by swallowing and sipping water or warm tea. Use tea or lozenges to soothe your throat to limit some coughing - I use Sootheez drops from Amazon, recommended by my speech therapist, or ThroatCoat herbal teas.

I have had chest pain too with my diagnosis of bronchiectasis and now ABPA. I had test upon tests done and there wasn’t an explanation. I started seeing my chiropractor again and told her what was going on. She is helping me to breathe correctly with my lungs. My ribs and diaphragm on my right side were all messed up. I haven’t had an episode since September and it was less than 3 minutes.

@picartist
Yes

My Dr who was at UT Tyler certainly knew MAC hurts . Had some less than complementary words for Drs who said MAC doesn’t hurt