Old Age is Not for Sissies...

Shortly after Christmas, sitting in my living room late one night, I reached over the back of the couch trying to find the switch to turn off the tree lights. The switch was just out of my reach, so I stretched a little further, with my ribcage pressed against the hard frame of the back of the couch, and just as my fingers made contact with the light switch, I heard a loud "pop" and had the unsettling sensation of what felt to me like massive movement inside my body. There was no pain, just this noise and this distinct sensation of movement where there shouldn't be movement. I sat down on the couch and everything seemed fine. I stood up, and everything continued to seem fine. But WTH had just happened? 

I Googled "popping sound and feeling of movement in ribs" and after reading this description: "a popped rib happens when the cartilage attached to any or your 'false ribs' breaks, resulting in abnormal movement. It's this slipping out of normal position that causes pain" I decided that even though I wasn't feeling pain, in all likelihood I'd probably popped a rib. Years ago, in my old house, bending over the back of that same couch and resting my ribcage against the hard top of the frame to pick  something up from the floor, I'd done the same thing. There'd been no apparent consequences then, so I wasn't too worried about it now. The last time it happened was pre-internet, so I didn't know what I'd done that time, but reading about popped ribs this time convinced me that's what I'd done both times. 

The thing is, I'm 72 now, so if I had any sense, I'd have taken it easy after doing this. But since I hadn't had any problems the last time, I assumed this time would be the same, and so the day after popping the rib, I took down and packed away my 9' artificial tree by myself, and then for good measure I went to Lowe's and bought six more 30-pound bags of rocks for my patio, which I loaded onto a cart and then into my car at Lowe's, and which I unloaded and carried from my car to my patio once I got home, where I opened the bags and finished laying the rocks where I wanted them, all without giving my rib a second thought. Big mistake.

That night the pain began. Not a lot of pain but constant pain: sort of a dull ache that starts directly beneath my right breast and then runs around to the side, toward my back. It hurts when I laugh and it hurts when I breathe. Lying on my back, or even reclining is impossible. It hurts enough when I lie down that the first night I finally gave up and tried to sleep on my chaise lounge, but that didn't work because even sitting up, leaning back leaves me in pain.

I have not called my doctor about this because my doctor is very much of the "Well, you're old, what do you expect?" camp, and there's no treatment other than time to heal the cartilage anyway. Re the pain, I can't take NSAIDs, so I'm pretty much stuck with it. I discovered I can get some sleep if I sleep on the offending couch though. If I remove the back cushions, the couch is quite deep, and if I prop pillows of various sizes against the back of the couch I have enough support to be able to actually lie on my side. 2 days into this, I began to feel as if my lower back might go out. I'd guess that was due to strain from trying to compensate for the rib pain. 

So I went to the drug store and picked up some large heating patches. I applied one of those to my ribcage in an attempt to get some relief. It didn't really help with the pain, and somehow the patch managed to rub raw a spot about the size of my thumbnail on the side of my body. I was going in for my annual skin check, and didn't want to get into a conversation about my popped rib with the dermatologist, so I just put a bandaid over the raw patch. When she saw it, the dermatologist asked, "Anything there I need to know about?" I said no and she moved on with the rest of the exam, at the end of which, 4 AKs (actinic keratoses) on my face and 4 more on my shoulders were removed by freezing, and one suspicious mole on the back of my neck was biopsied. All well and good, but that night, after I stepped out the shower, I caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror and saw a red bandaid on my side, around the raw patch. Except that I'd removed the bandaid as soon as I came home: it only looked like a red bandaid in the mirror, because the bandaid itself had caused a raised red rash everywhere it came into contact with my skin. Damn!

What's next? Will I start growing a second head inside my nose? A few years ago I would have said, "Don't be ridiculous!" but these days, I'm thinking, "I dunno, seems possible, maybe..."