Sharp pain on left side of chest

[oldgreenhat]

Hi all, I've been having a symptom which I think is covid related but I might be wrong. I am a 5'5 120 lb 23 year old female (sedentary until last few weeks) and I had covid just about a year ago. I had some long covid symptoms including prolonged shortness of breath (which became worse with environmental stressors and improved with flonase) and very odd taste and smell for awhile, but these have subsided.

I'm unsure if this is related, but in late November of last year I started to have a stabbing pain in the left side of my chest. It started very faint 1/10 on the pain scale for maybe 10 seconds and grew to a peak in late December, being an 8/10 in one instance and lasting for hours. It appears in slightly different areas around or under my left breast. It's been accompanied by a litany of other symptoms which I believe are probably anxiety induced such as numbness/tingling in my left arm and dizziness.

I went to the ER at one point where I had blood work, a chest x-ray, and an EKG done, and sent home with a note about tachycardia but otherwise nothing. I started on a low dose of atenolol. I wore a heart monitor for a month, had more EKGs, had an echocardiogram. Nothing came back abnormal. Eventually I stopped taking the atenolol as I had a very low heart rate and very low blood pressure on it. I tried taking tylenol on a doctor's orders to reduce inflammation but it didn't seem to help.

I just saw a pulmonologist for a consult who was mostly unconcerned but was interested in getting a lung function test. I also just had my blood drawn to test my thyroid, as my mom had terrible hypothyroidism. There's not really any history of heart disease in my family besides an aunt having an arrhythmia.

The chest pain just never went away really. It appears maybe once a day at a low intensity for anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes or so. Sometime's it's worse and sometimes better. I can't really track down a pattern, although in all fairness I'm very scattered :) It doesn't accompany panic attacks or lots of stress. Sometimes I think something is wrong with my heart as my diastolic bp is always very low, 55-60. Sometimes it feels like my heart flops or skips a beat, but they didn't see anything on the heart monitor. Maybe it's because I was on atenolol? Sometimes I feel like my circulation is way worse than it used to be. Sometimes I think I'm going nuts!

I'm so sorry for the long post. I don't want to be a hypochondriac at 23 but having this random pain for almost a year now is really pulling my brain apart. Please let me know if any of this sounds familiar, or what you would look at if you were my doctor. Don't be afraid to tell me it's psychosomatic if you think so. And thank you.

[specialmom]

Hi. I had covid too and have had a few long term things like altered taste and smell (mostly just annoying but still ...).  It sounds like you ruled out a cardiovascular issue.  Which would be what anyone having chest pain should always do first. Have you considered seeing a pulmonologist? They specialize in lungs and this could be very helpful for you.  Of course, I don't know from here nor am I a doctor, but your symptoms sound a little like pleurisy.  Pleurisy is inflammation of the sheet-like layers that cover the lungs (the pleura).  Symptoms are a sharp pain upon intake of breath.  I always had thought it would be at all times you'd have this pain but have learned that this is not always the case. https://www.nhsinform.scot/illnesses-and-conditions/lungs-and-airways/pleurisy  That's some info to read on it. It kind of makes sense given that there is so much inflammation with covid 19 (why smell gets funky, that nerve gets inflamed).  What do you think of this?

[Paxiled]

She says she just saw a pulmonologist, Mom.  We're not docs here, but did anyone take an MRI and X-ray of your ribcage?  If you did a lot of coughing and had trouble breathing when you had covid, you could very well have tweaked that area.  It's a common thing.  Given your young age, I'm guessing this isn't a heart thing at all but you strained something.  That's my guess.  I've strained that area doing abs, and I've strained it several times getting hit or thrown when I did kung fu some years back.  That's what it sounds like to me.  

[oldgreenhat]

Thanks so much for replying! Do you think a strain would last this long? I guess I've had colds on and off since then so maybe I keep reagitating it every few months. I got a chest X-ray before the pain started and then once at the ER when I thought I was having a heart attack, but my nurse mom said that often at the ER they'll only look at the heart and disregard everything else. Honestly if it's just soreness/inflammation and not like, a blood clot, I'm more than happy.

[Paxiled]

One way that isn't infallible to tell is, press on the area and if you find a sore spot that reproduces or intensifies the pain you've found your problem.  As for how long a problem sticks around, for everyone that's a different answer.  Some of us heal quickly and some of us take forever.  Some of us have too strong of an immune system that keeps the body inflamed when it gets injured and some recover immediately.