Well, I went to my PCP today for an EKG, and she strongly suspects angina to be the source of pain - too often pretty severe - in my lower left chest and side. She's sending me to a heart specialist for a stress test, etc.

I've had this pain in my side & lower chest for about 5 weeks now. I suspected a bruised rib or pulled muscle or something. I had seen my Doc about 4 weeks ago for a general checkup and when I said it was the wrong spot for my heart, she said "well, not really". It was still manageable with Advil at the time, so we just let it go at that. Take it easy and it should heal.

I am in charge of a state-wide annual Medieval Cotillion for a youth group I work with. It was 2 weeks ago. I didn't lift anything, but moved around and twisted around A LOT and it IS pretty stressful. My side/chest got a lot worse and the pain then had spread all the way around back to my spine, so I went back to Doc. Had X-rays, and it wasn't my lung trying to collapse again, and my ribs didn't show sign of a break or crack. We even checked my kidney, just in case. Been on script pain med for over 2 weeks now and still no better, so went in for an EKG today.

What had worried me was that the pain mostly seemed to be for no reason at all. It just builds up like a squeezing sort of slo-mo spasm. If I'm standing up, I can relieve it by leaning down on a table or something. Now I have pain/tightness in my jaw, neck, and left shoulder sometimes - not unbearable, just worrisome. Thing is, I have bad lungs and I'm an OC survivor, so these symptoms could be attributed to other things, too.

I used to feel pretty good that at least my heart wasn't giving me any trouble. Hmmm. So I got Doc's explanations and I've Googled angina, but - any words of wisdom for me here? I'm not an alarmist - I've been through OC, collapsible lungs, twisted gangrenous colon, and going septic with pneumonia, for Pete's sake - but I'm not very up on heart stuff. I know my organs have been through a lot, including my going down to 60 lbs post Tx. By the way, I just found out that I'm back down to 82 lbs, so I'll start on those peanut butter shakes and other stuff tomorrow.

Lani