You know sometimes when you're sick but instead of seeing a doctor, you type your symptoms into Google and the search results tells you that you have a serious disease and only a few months left on Earth?
It tends to be worse in medical school.
Now, every person ever who has attended medical school has a story like this. This is mine. Some time ago, I suddenly woke up in the morning with chest pain. The pain wasn't present the night before. The human body is liable to aches and pains every now and again so I thought "It'll go away in a few hours".
It didn't.
So then I thought "Ah sleep is when the body rests and repairs itself. I'll probably feel better tomorrow". So with some discomfort due to the pain I fell asleep. I awoke the next morning still due to pain. By that point I was a little worried but still thinking "Give it a couple of days. It'll blow over".
I was wrong.
It was worrying to me because I was experiencing sharp-ish pain near the left 5th intercostal space midclavicular line. Which is a fancy way of saying about over the heart or apex of the heart to be exact. (Literal heart here, not taking about oh she broke my heart oh boohoo kind of heart)
And ladies and gentlemen, pain around your heart is usually not a good sign.
"Wow, thanks Captain Obvious", I hear you say. Am I hearing voices? The psychosis setting in.
Anyway, I started to wonder if I had been eating right and exercising enough prior to this happening. Trying to trace the etiology of this event.
The pain occurs on breathing so that kind of ruled out a heart problem. I just checked that by holding my breath but well, studying the things I do... doesn't make me feel better about the possibilities.
At worst it was cardiac problem and less worse would be a lung issue. I was experiencing pleuritic chest pain or at least I think I was.
By day 4, I couldn't stand the worrying anymore so I went to a clinic to get a check-up. The doctor did as doctors do and told me my life changing diagnosis. I had costochondritis.
Costo freaking chondritis. For shame! By this point I'd already been in med school for several years.
Sigh.
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On another note, a friend had a birthday on April 2x. This friend is also studying medicine.
Thinking I was being clever in using some medical humour, I texted (paraphrased) -
Me: Hb 2x.4 *
Them: Thanks!
Me: What for? Haemoglobin (Hb) 2x.4 g/dL. Just saying Polycythemia.
Them:
Me: It was a good joke though right?
*supposedly short form Happy birthday 2x day of April (4th month) so 2x.4.
This person still doesn't talk to me to this day.
So there you go people. Whenever you think its a good idea to use pun-based humour, don't. Especially if its medical puns.
