Re: Loose lower Right Rib, Please HELP!!!

I read your post and it reminds me of what I am going through.
I had an injury to my to my ribs 5 years back. I snapped my T4 rib off my sternum (a chiropractor did it). Although prior to the snap I was having a pain in my sternum (I believe this was from a repetitive motion that I was doing, and it could have been the start of the costo which led to the rib snap). It took the rib cartilage 2 years to knit and heal. It was without a doubt the most painful injury I've ever had in my life. I have had costo for years since this occurred.

My costo has always been centralized near my sternum, affecting the ribs on the right side. This past May I noticed the sharp pain to the right of my sternum, and I went and saw my thoracic doc. He gave me a bone scan and it came back showing that 3 ribs on the right side of my sternum had inflamed cartilage. Again he diagnosed me with costo. One of the other problems that I went to see him for was that I was having pain under the lower right rib. This pain goes around to my back somewhere around the kidney area. And up between my shoulder blades. He told me he had no idea what was causing that, but he didn't think the costo could refer pain that far (it's always been in my sternum area - right ribs). Months later I called my urologist, worried it was kidney pain. They X-rayed my kidneys and and they appeared fine. The pain was still there. Oddly enough, this pain does not bother me at all when I sleep......but mostly when I am sitting. Like you, I thought I had a loose lower rib. Sometimes it felt like it moved or wiggled if I pushed it. Well, all ribs move if you push them and that's a fact. I also have a cracking sternum and cracking ribs on the right side. But this pain is persistent, and really bad in the morning when I get up, and when I get home from work at night. It always bothers me driving home from work too. Sometimes it feels better if I wrap a heating pad around the right lower ribs.

I decided to see my GP. I told him what was going on. I showed him exactly where my pain was. All the pinpoints led him to believe gall bladder was the culprit. On a side note, my Dad, my 3 older sisters, my grandmother, 2 aunts, an uncle, a niece, and a cousin have all had their gall bladders removed. Bad gall bladders run rampant in my family. Everyone had either stones or disease. My oldest sister had the Hyda-scan and it showed slow bile discharge. She insisted they remove the gall bladder anyway, and when they did they told her it was indeed diseased. All her pain went away and she is completely fine now (sans gall bladder). None of my relatives who had it removed have had any problems at all. You can live without the gall bladder. Yeah, there are horror stories on the 'net about losing the gall bladder, but every single solitary person I have known that has had it removed has not had any problems.

I had a Hyda-scan done yesterday. I had it done 5 years back also, when the costo first hit (before we knew I had actually snapped the T4 which was causing all my pain). When I had it done years back, I remember watching the gall bladder flush normally and in regular intervals on the monitor. Well, when I had it done yesterday it only flushed once during the 20-some minute period. In the beginning of the flushing part of the test I happened to take a deep breath and to my astonishment, my gall bladder flew up about 6 inches and immediately started to drain quickly. Then it stopped draining when I resumed normal breathing. When you have costo, you don't breath normally because the chest is held tight (from inflamed cartilage). We costo sufferers tend to breath well, but we breath in such a way that we don't fully expand the rib cage. I was thinking, I wonder if after years of not breathing normally, expanding the rib cage properly, if it has any effects on the internal organs that rub against the ribs (the gall bladder being the one in question here). When I breathed deep my gall bladder flushed, but when I went back to my normal costo breathing the bile just slowly, slowly moved out (not normal) in a hazy cloud. This was not how my gall bladder behaved during my test 5 years back. So, now I speculate that the costo, after 5 years, has affected my gall bladder. Who knows, maybe if the ribs tighten and press down they could possibly affect one of the gall bladder drains....impeding it, damaging it. This is all speculation of course, and I am not a doctor, just a guy with a pain in his side.

I am now waiting for my doc to call and give me the Hyda-scan results. I know it didn't drain normally based on my memory of how it drained 5 years back. I have a huge history of bad gall bladders in my family. If there is anything questionable about my results, I have decided I am having my GP refer me to a surgeon. Everyone I have talked to about having there gall bladders removed has told me they are fine now and glad they had it done. I even talked to a woman the other day who had chronic pain in this area and after years had it removed and all her pain is finally gone.

Another thing I wonder, could a bad gall bladder actually cause costo? If a bad gall bladder refers pain to the sternum, than doesn't it stand to reason that the sternum area after time would become inflamed with pain and develop it's own problems? Anyway, it's just a theory. Tweet