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Pectus Excavatum Question

I was born with a PE and my mom has told me that they wanted to fix i when I was 9 months old. She decided against it though. The entire time I was growing up all I was ever really told was my sternum was backwards, until recently when I decided to look it up on the internet. Now I am 22 years old and I believe that it is the cause of some symptoms that I have been having lately.

About 5-6 months ago I noticed that when I would stretch, it felt like my sternum popped. Then about 2 months ago, I experienced mild chest pains for the first time. It has happened a few more times since then. There has also been shortness of breath like after I get home from driving, taking out the trash or from climbing the stairs to our 3rd floor apt. I have also been getting dizzy and light headed almost each day multiple times. I have noticed that when I go to lay down it feels as though my heart does a big lunge and then it takes a while for it to slow down to where it feels normal.

So I guess here's my question. Is this something that needs to be seen a/s/a/p? Or can it wait till Oct 8th for the R.A.M. (free health care) that will be in my area then? As far as I know, it hasn't been checked since I was very small and I've never noticed my above symptoms before this past year.
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Avatar universal
Hi missy, i'm 22 and also suffer from PE. I also get a pop or cracking sound sometimes when i stretch out. Lately I sometimes have been get a feeling or shortness of breath, but i usually need to huck up some phlegm than it goes away. I get the odd sensation in my chest. How severe is your PE? I've never had a doctor been too concerned about mine, but upon reviewing others on here i think mines pretty severe. Anyway i see this is almost a year old topic, can you update us on your sitation?
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Avatar universal
That's what I was thinking too. I believe my mom mentions something about either also being born with a small hole in my heart, which closed on it's own, or having a murmur when I was small. I can't say for sure on either of those without talking to her about it again.

I was leaning in the direction that I need to have it checked now, but since I've only recently started looking up info on this I kinda wanted to make sure I wasn't just being paranoid about my symptoms. Thank you for taking the time to read this and responding.
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Avatar universal
Oct 8th is kind of far away. It sounds like you need to be checked out right now because of your recent symptoms.
Do you know if you were also checked for any heart birth defects when you were little?
If it were me, I would get in to see the Dr now. Your symptoms could be from your sternum but you need to find out what's going on right now.  Remar
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