Ribs

It's weird- I feel like I've told everyone about my ribs over and over again but people still keep sounding shocked or confused so I probably have just been complaining to Nate a lot. Here goes...

I cracked a rib or pulled a large wrap around muscle or injured the cartilage in my ribs etc. They're not quite sure because honestly it doesn't matter so they haven't bothered to x-ray or anything (which I'm not sure I'd do being pregnant anyway). I did this by coughing. Yes seriously, coughing.

Well I had talked to my OB/GYN about it and he said there wasn't much they could do even if it was cracked so to take some very mild cough medicine that wouldn't hurt the baby, some tylenol for pain and to let my ribs have a chance to heal themselves. I really did try. In fact, I thought things were starting to get better until I was laying on my side in bed Sunday morning and coughed really hard. There was an intense pain, and a slipping feeling and then a whole day of being grumpy and uncomfortable. I made it worse.

So I went to my new family care doctor and paid him to tell me what my OB/GYN already told me- that they couldn't really do much anyway, take some cough medicine and tylenol. However he also said he thought I might have bronchitis and prescribed an antibiotic. My friends let me tell you something. Do you know what bronchitis means? It means your bronchi in your lungs are inflamed...so pretty much it means nothing.

I had a horribly bad cough a couple years ago in Idaho that wouldn't go away. I went to my doctor, I saw specialists and I did a ridiculous amount of testing for all sorts of little known lung disorders. Guess what they found? Nothing! Just that I had bronchitis. Bronchitis can be caused by an infection or irritant or asthma or any number of things. So, it can be treated with antibiotics or steroids or just giving you lots of cough medicine to bring up the phlegm. Bronchitis is basically a symptom with other symptoms.

Now, soap box aside, pretty much what this means is that we're treating 3 symptoms: pain, cough and bronchitis for something that we don't know what it is and I don't think they'll discover. What we can't treat is the only thing that I really care about, which is the blasted ribs. I'm not even allowed to wrap them because that increases my chance of getting pneumonia.

So note to self...cough softer and remind baby the rest of her/his life of how I couldn't take good pain meds because I was worried about hurting her/him. Ahhh the justice of guilt.