Anxiety and A&E

So... the past few days I have been having quite a lot of anxiety surrounding some pain and sensations in my right hand chest. I have written about this in a bit more detail in some of my pages, however wanted to share a quick update to my posts. 

 I had an intermittent pain between the right shoulder blade and my spine...a common pneumothorax symptom, and I had a dull ache in my side with a very persistent grinding sensation in my chest, which was quite familiar in feeling to the bubbling sensation I had during a collapsed lung. 

 I went online as you do to seek some reassurance and kept telling myself it was probably just a dull muscular ache. The spirometer level looked good and I had a lot of messages from people on Facebook groups who responded to my concerned post and told me it was probably nothing and quite normal. 
Despite all this however, I found myself in A&E yesterday to get checked out. The anxiety was causing me issues, probably more than anything else, so I figured it best to check. Good news....X-Ray looked good...in fact its the best X-Ray picture of my lungs I have ever seen (usually they're in a state of collapse). 

 So...all is good and I finally feel free of the horrid anxiety cloud. I guess I wanted to share this post with people to say that if you feel anxious, first of all, it is normal....don't feel stupid and try to push it away and second of all, it is ok to go and get it checked out..it might not be bad news! I was so worried about heading to A&E in case it was bad news that it put me off going. I know it is silly to think that way, I mean if it had it had and there as nothing I could do...but I just didn't want to know. However looking back, this now seems a silly way to respond and it only played into the hands of anxiety, which is so common in people after episodes of spontaneous pneumothorax or those who have had VATS. 

 Message of the day then...don't feel silly about anxiety and if it hurts or you're unsure...get it checked out! For all the help that forums are, you need to figure out your own limits and what is normal for you...it is nice to share and know you're not alone, but from my experience, knowing other people had pains too didn't stop me worrying about my own. 

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I hope that these accounts are of some help to those of you out there in the same situation as I was a week ago. Please feel free to leave a comment, whether it is an experience of your own or a question you would like to ask and hopefully we can encourage more people to discuss this issue. Thank you

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