Pain in the chest/back/belly is really tricky because the nervous system is funny in this area. The place that you feel the pain can be in a different spot than the event that is causing the pain. We all know about how pain in the left shoulder blade and radiating down the arm is a symptom of a heart attack, right? The pain from bad gas is precisely the same and in exactly the same spot as the pain from a heart attack. My dad had a gallbladder attack 6 days after he had prostate surgery. It took them of week of tests ruling out other, more obvious things, before they figured out that it was his gallbladder. In his case, having just had surgery under general anesthesia, and given the nature and location of the pain, the "obvious" diagnosis was a blood clot in his lungs. Fortunately the obvious diagnosis was wrong!
One good thing is that worse lying down and better when you are upright probably rules out something caused by the heart. Angina gets worse the harder your heart works, and so lying down is usually going to be the most comfortable position.
At Sun, 9 Feb 2003, Koolinsask@aol.com wrote:
>
>They did nothing to rule out an ulcer or reflux!!! This too is something that
>I was wondering today! Would either one of these cause my back to be in so
>much pain, that too, gets worse when lying down......it is hurting to take
>deep breathes as well, it's not high it's low to mid back pain......this is
>just insane.....
>
>Thank you for your quick response
>Cherryl
-- cathy :-)