On Saturday, I was sitting in my La-Z-Bum chair, playing Scrabble on my laptop. All the sudden I had an intense chest pain that radiated up both sides of my neck and into my lower jaw. I called the consulting nurse and she told me to get my ass to Urgent Care, which I did, thanks to my husband.
After a few hours, they determined that I had not had a heart attack, and there were no blood clots roaming recklessly around my body.
Then on Monday, in an innocent move at a park, I scraped my knee as bad as I ever did when I was little, and injured my ribs on the side of my body that I'd had cancer, surgery and treatment. The next day my chest hurt like crazy. I called the consulting nurse again and she said I'd probably bruised or cracked my ribs. On Thursday, it hurt so bad I called the consulting nurse again. She advised me to come in and see someone because the injury happened on the same side as the cancer, etc.
So, I left work and went in. The Nurse Practitioner examined me and had me have a chest x-ray. The x-ray showed no cracks, but did show quite a few staples in my body from the cancer surgery.
I had no idea. I said "Hunh."
Isn't this the kind of thing my surgeon would have indicated were left me? In doing some googling on the topic, apparently it's not unusual to leave clips in after surgery, and it's not unusual for patients to be surprised when they find out later they have surgical clips in their bodies.
The NP told me the staples may have been wrenched during my fall, and that may be what's causing the pain.
WTF?
Here's a photo of what breast cancer surgery "clips" look like. It's not my x-ray. Mine shows a lot more in a straight line.
The radiologist's report on my x-ray said "There are surgical clips in the left breast and left axilla." "Axilla" sounds like an animal on the Serengeti, something with horns that runs fast.
