Thank You for your excellent and detailed post. I wish I could give you a specific diagnosis regarding my mother other than chest inflammation. They have done every test on her possible and have managed to turn up nothing. I think the actual diagnosis was Costochondritis (basically mid-chest inflammation with an unknown cause). She does have hypothyroidism, and they found benign nodules in her neck earlier this year, that they still don't know the cause of them. So basically it is a mystery. I've recently started taking iodine, I wonder if it might help in this situation? Except for I'd imagine she'd have to take less of her thyroid medicine.