Recently, I've been waking up in the morning (and once was woken up by it) with extremely bad chest pains. To describe, it feels like someone is slowly piercing the inside of my chest with a knife. When it does happen (about once or twice a week), my chest hurts all day. I know this could be a lot of things and I should probably go see a doctor, but I thought I'd get some input on here first.
Definitely go to a doctor. It could be anything from just a panic attack to something wrong with your heart. And, I wouldn't fuck around with a possible heart issue.
Symptoms of pulmonary embolism appear suddenly and include: shortness of breath, rapid breathing, or wheezing bloody sputum cough lightheadedness, dizziness, fainting sharp chest pain or back pain
^ I don't think it's that. I don't have any of those symptoms except the cough (and sharp chest pain), but I just have smoker's cough. I'm thinking it might just be severe heart burn. But yeah, I'm definitely going to go see a doctor.
How is that? Those can be symptoms of a million other things. And I just looked up pulmonary embolism, and the chest pain that occurs with it is when breathing. The chest pains I get are random and happen regardless of whether or not I'm taking a breath.
Go see a Doctor, it could just be something irritating the lining of your lung, eg plueritic pain, caused by a chest infection, or it could be something entirely different. It could also be a PE (pulmonary embolism aka blood clot on the lung) or just an anxiety attack. You can't possibly know until you go see your Doctor, you will likely get a few blood tests one of which will determine if you have a blood clot or not, you may also get a chest xray, which will confirm if you have a chest infection or not (however the Doctor will likely be able tell that you have one just be listening to your chest as you breath in and out with a stethoscope and will probably just ask you for a sputumn sample if need be to isolate the exact bacteria or virus involved), and perhaps an ECG (electro-cardiogram or electrical tracing of your heart), which will rule out, well lots of things really, from an irregular heart beat, to a recent heart attack. Trick is not to worry - so many symptoms can be so many things, so it's pointless to worry over something that might be nothing. But do see a Doctor though. Pleuritic chest pain can be painful, I know, I've had it and it scared the beeheebee's out of me I thought I had all kinds of things wrong with me and it is different when it happens to you and your imagination just runs away from you and you can't stop thinking the worst, 'is it this?' or 'oh no, is it that?'
