42 year old female living in the US. Currently uninsured until January 1
I used to socially smoke but haven't picked up a cigarette in 4 years.
My issue started 8 weeks ago with a random, intermittent, focal breast pain in the upper center left breast. After 2 weeks it was still there off and on. I couldn't locate any lumps or anything different from my usual self checks. I found a clinic that does free breast exams for people over 40. I was told they didn't feel anything concerning and put it down to hormones. The pain still shows up, but is much less frequent.
After the breast appointment (6 weeks ago), I started getting an intermittent, aching pain near my left shoulder blade. I thought I had pulled a muscle but 3 weeks later and it's still there, off and on. Taking a bath and lying down make it feel better, so I'm trying to tell myself it's muscular and it's not healing because I am very busy during the day. Meanwhile my anxiety is ramping up, especially after Dr. Google says shoulder blade pain that doesn't go away can be a symptom of lung cancer. I go down the Google rabbit hole and see that hoarseness can also be a symptom and I start to notice my voice is crackly now and I feel like I need to keep clearing my throat.
3 weeks later and I'm starting to get this slight rib aching on the left and what feels like pressure under the left rib cage. There is also a lot of gurgling and growling that is hard to pinpoint. I can't tell if it's coming from my intestines near the rib cage or if it's actually coming from the lung area. More googling and now it tells me gurgling sounds can be pleurisy. Then I come across an article about malignant pleural effusion and see that it most often happens from lung or breast cancer that has spread. Now I'm panicking that my breast pain is not actually hormonal, but is cancer and it has spread to my lungs and is causing all of these problems on my left side.
I don't have shortness of breath. I see that pleurisy causes sharp pain when breathing in deep, which doesn't happen to me. My appetite has been terrible, but I'm also extremely stressed and anxious and not sleeping well. I lie awake at night reading articles and worrying. I have moments throughout the day where I feel normal, especially when my mind finally frees itself from this anxiety prison. I could have given myself a stomach ulcer worrying about all of this and I'm kind of hoping that's the case. By the time I get to see a proper doctor, it will be 4 months since all of this began. Thanks for letting me put this out there. I've been holding onto it for so long because of all of my past health anxiety (I've diagnosed myself with liver cancer, melanoma and a brain tumor and have had none of them). So I keep this anxiety and worry to myself. Thank you anyone who reads this.
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