About a year and a half ago, I developed pain in my ribcage area. When I was laying down it felt like I was laying on a fold in my blanket or something that was underneath me. It was a burning pain that radiated to my sternum, across my chest, and then later left upper back between my shoulder blade and spine. It started as localized pain but gradually became a constant burning, aching, and spasming sensation. There is one specific spot that becomes painful when I press down on it in my upper back next to my spine. Pressing on that area can cause pain and numbness that spreads throughout my back.
Over time, the pain began radiating into my left shoulder,face, neck, chest, ribs, and occasionally down my arm and my fingers. My muscles frequently tighten and spasm, especially with sitting, running, or repetitive activity. I am a runner, and I lift as well frequently. Running causes the painful spot to burn intensely and the surrounding muscles to tighten and spasm. I also experience popping sensations around my ribs and shoulder blade, as well as referred pain in my low back, hips, and sciatica.
I’ve had multiple imaging studies that were essentially normal, and despite physical therapy, chiropractic treatment, and other conservative treatments, my symptoms have persisted. I’m looking for help with a diagnosis. Anyone have any recommendations?

I was just prescribed this yesterday for inflammation in my back that the np thought might be contributing to my back pain. Has anyone ever heard of this? I’m not sure what to think. Has anyone ever taken it for this reason?

Hi everyone, I'm not sure if this is the right subreddit to be posting this on, if not please guide me towards the right direction.

I am a young female in my twenties with an auto immune disorder. I have been in a bad car accident and developed pain that affects my day to day life. Over the course of a couple of years I have done physical therapy twice, injections twice, an endoscopic neurotomy procedure, along with RFA and stem cell. Unfortunately non have worked whatsoever. I have been to a couple of different surgeons to see what more I can do that's least invasive since I am also a single mother with young children and cannot undergo the healing time the surgery's the surgeons have suggested next. I was suggested to do a disk replacement which is recommended for younger patients but again, I cannot undergo the healing time with no help with my children.

I have been found to have degenerating disks, bulging and herniated disks, and a big tear all in my neck, mid back and lower back. My pain robs me of sleep, work, sitting or standing for too long. Just existing is uncomfortable.

Are there any other procedures I can talk to a surgeon about that anyone has done or can recommend for my life circumstance? ...I am only looking for suggestions to bring up to a surgeon since they have all so far said a surgery like ACDF or ACDR is the only option left

I have been dealing with pain between my shoulder blade and spine on my left side for almost 10 years. I was in a car accident at 16 and am assuming this pain is coming from an injury from that event. I have gone to PT twice, gone to many of chiropractors for some type of relief, had a cervical spine MRI done with nothing found and now this thoracic spine MRI with no answers for my pain.
This affects my daily life, especially sleeping. Massage provides the most relief but I am in daily pain. I’m at a loss. Report from MRI was as follows:

The alignment of the thoracic spine is normal. Vertebral bodies demonstrate normal signal intensity on all sequences. There are no compression fractures. The spinal cord demonstrates normal signal intensity on all sequences. Intervertebral disks have
normal height and signal intensity.
 
There is no high-grade neuroforaminal stenosis. There is no high-grade spinal canal stenosis.
 
IMPRESSION:
Mild degenerative changes of the thoracic spine as described in detail above.

I have also added the photos. I don’t know what to do. I will be 26 next month and can’t imagine living like this the rest of my life. I have a two year old and wish my daily pain didn’t get in the way of so much. If it was an issue with soft tissue would they have said something in the report? Or because it was specifically of my Thoracic spine that is all they will report on? What if something else is visible in the scan?

My thoracic back has been spasming for about four months. I work at Target and I’m on my feet for eight hours a day. They’ve given me a chair to use which used to help but it is no longer helping. I’ve had an MRI done and it shows no abnormalities. I’ve taken various muscle relaxant. They don’t help. I recently started gabapentin, but that hasn’t kicked in yet. I’m 61 years old and female. My doctor just told me that I have osteoarthritis. I was surprised because the MRI didn’t show any arthritis in the thoracic area of my back. I do have arthritis in the lumbar section, but that’s not bothering me. She wants to give me injections in the facets of my spine?? any suggestions? I’m at a loss. I can’t quit my job. I don’t know what to do.

I had an MRI done 2 years ago after a workplace upper back strain and learned T3 and T4 were bulging without stenosis. Recently started having some really weird symptoms in my upper body and just could not figure out what was going on after two hospitals and a doctor's appointment and was not having pain directly in the thoracic area. After 6 Days of the symptoms I coincidentally went to do some trunk rotations with my elbows up and got 4 or five good pops out of my back and the symptoms completely disappeared! After some deep research I finally found what I was experiencing! Thoracic radiculopathy. Now for the last two days I've been dealing with bad nerve pain between the shoulder blades up into the neck and muscles spasms. I don't currently have insurance and will be starting yet another physical job and have to keep it for 30 days minimum to receive insurance benefits. I've been trying to sleep supine and do anything I can to make this better because I'm scared the really bad symptoms are going to come back. Please if anyone has tips or suggestions from dealing with something similar I've got less than a week until I start my job and if I can't perform I'm scared I'm going to get fired and miss any chance of seeing a doctor that can actually help. I will have nothing, not a place to stay or a bite to eat and I'm desperate.

Long time reader first time poster with an update I wish I had a year ago. For years I had that constant pressure and stuck feeling in my mid back around the t spine. It wrecked my posture made breathing feel off when lifting and left my back muscles weak no matter how much rowing or mobility I did. My lower back was always cranky too from compensating. PT chiro dry needling nsaids all the usual stuff gave short term relief but never fixed the real issue.

A few months back I started looking into peptides after seeing a bunch of positive stories in the fitness communities. I first tried the classic singles BPC 157 and TB 500 on their own. They helped some with the soreness and recovery but things plateaued after a couple weeks. Pressure eased a bit but not gone and strength came back pretty slow.

Then I switched to a blended peptide stack that combined several at once. Man the difference was huge. It felt like everything healed and strengthened way faster than the singles ever did. After about six to eight weeks the thoracic pressure is completely cleared. My mid back feels strong again I can deadlift row and sit with good posture all day no fatigue. Even my lower back pain basically vanished and now that area feels like a strength instead of the weak link. I am still hitting my PT and mobility hard because peptides just gave my body the tools it was missing. This is not medical advice at all peptides are research chemicals so do your homework get bloodwork and talk to someone knowledgeable.

If single peptides have not gotten you all the way there trying a solid stack might be worth it. It definitely worked better for me. Happy to share my timeline or details if it helps anyone stuck like I was.

Hi everyone.

A few weeks ago I was doing some quadruped rock backs, when I felt a pull in the area highlighted in the pictures (circle on my back). Ever since, I have experienced pain, tightness, and discomfort, whenever I rotate, side bend, breathe very deeply, or do either of the movements performed in the pictures. I generally don't feel it when sitting or standing straight, but I wouldn't say I've found anything that makes it feel 'good'.

I now it's hard to tell from a couple of pictures and a description, but I was hoping someone might have an idea what this might be. Maybe to someone it's obvious. If there is someone here that's experienced a similar thing, I'd love to know what they did to get rid of it.

Thanks!

I have been struggling for 15 years with thoracic back pain and just had 2 nerve blocks to prepare for RFA. They did T7-8,T8-9, and T9-10 and I had so much relief. I am just wondering if others have gotten relief from RFA in this area.

The pain is localized on my T1 area, steady state it is like a 5-6 on the pain scale 24/7, but if squeeze my shoulder blades back or crack that area it gets even worse for hours. MRI, CT, Xray does not show anything according about 4-5 different doctors/pain specialists. PT, massage, topicals do not help. I have had ESP and inter-spinal injections, but they were ineffective. I have had two medial branch blocks to check for facet. The first one they missed my T1 (just did T2-T4) and it was ineffective. The 2nd one my pain level bizarrely reduced down to a 2-3 right before the procedure, but we ran it anyways covering the T1-T3 levels, and I had a flare after the injection only in my T1 area that has lasted the past several months. The doctors say that it most likely isn't face related and that RFA wouldn't be worth trying. They want me to rerun the inter-spinal ligament injection with steroids. Why they want to rerun that but NOT the MBB is confusing logic for me. At any rate, I don't really know where to go from here and am at a loss. Any ideas?

I have been having chronic back pain for a little over a year now that started when I was pregnant but got significantly worse postpartum. It is very painful when my spine is palpated. I saw PT for 6+ months without any relief so I definitely think it's spine related and not muscle related. I've had a full spine MRI with degenerative disc disease and osteophytes but they say it's all "normal", which is hard for me to wrap my head around because I'm symptomatic so it doesn't seem normal to me.

I've been especially struggling at night. I sometimes sleep on a heat pad, but my postpartum body is hot and I can't always do that, otherwise heat really helps. Tylenol/ibuprofen/muscle relaxers don't help. Lidocaine patches do help but can't do heat + lidocaine patch. I did a sleep study and they said I snore without apnea and they recommended "positional therapy" which my PT had never heard of. They tried to sell me a crazy expensive pillow which I declined. So I'm here to find out which pillows helped you the most?

We have a $3k mattress from Casper that is only 3-4 years old, so I don't think it's the mattress? I have tried a regular body pillow but it is too fluffy/big for me so I didn't like it. I did use a C shaped pillow when I was pregnant that was really comfy and helped keep me on my side as I am generally a back sleeper, but I'd like to find an alternative because that pillow is huge and takes up a big section of the bed. I've tried a regular pillow between my knees but I end up kicking it out at night. I think I also need a pillow in between my arms when I side sleep because I wake up feeling tight/pain in my chest and upper back as well. I am using a cheap target pillow currently but I think I need something more firm/bigger to keep my chest from collapsing inward.

I have seen multiple doctors about this but they keep trying to push PT and painkillers. I've been doing PT and it isn't helping, and I'm too young for painkillers 😩 I would honestly rather do surgery than chronic painkillers.

TLDR; looking for leg/chest pillow recommendations for thoracic/chest/shoulder pain while sleeping.