I am very scared that i may have lung cancer...

for the last year i never have been feeling good when i breath my chest hurts all the time my ribs hurt when i move all the time and i am always weak all the time.

So i went to the doctor and he tells me that all these symptoms are from my high blood pressure.

So then i tell him ARE you sure and he says i am pretty sure that the pains u are having are from gaining weight.

I am 6'3 tall 214 pounds.

He says the reason my ribs hurt also may be from sleeping wrong or a muscle type problem.


So far all i got done was a ekg and a holter mointer to see if my heart was ok.

My chest always hurts i am so sick of this crap am scared i have lung cancer...

I am 23 years old i used to smoke for 2 years but i quit 4 years ago.


What would mae my chest hurt all the time and when i breath in my chest hurts and when i am laying down and try to turn my body it hurts.

If any one knows what is wrong with me please help

also my neck has been soar for one month

You're 23?! The chances of you having lung cancer from your smoking, as I mentioned to you before, are almost ZERO. The vast majority of people who get lung cancer from smoking have a MINIMUM 10 packyear smoking history. A packyear is defined as the number of packs you smoke a day, times the number of years you've been smoking.

Secondly, lung cancer barely every presents as chest pain. What you are probably having are some small chest wall, and musculoskeletal problems, BUT you're paying such close attention to it that it feels worse than it really is.

Usually lung cancer is suspected when someone has certain respiratory symptoms AND has a history that puts them at risk for lung cancer (i.e. having smoked for over 30 years). Respiratory symptoms can include a non-resolving pneumonia, or a new onset cough that won't go away, coughing up blood (rare) etc. Sometimes a person will present with shortness of breath due to a lung collapsed by a tumour, but this is also hard to distinguish because people often have underlying chronic lung disease like emphysema or chronic bronchitis.

Other signs of lung cancer are the weird and wonderful internal medicine things like:

hoarseness in the voice
drooping of one of the eyelids with the same eye's pupil being constricted
having the inability to sweat on the side of the face of the affected eye
swollen arm
painful arm
swollen left side of the face
numbness in a certain nerve distribution
arthritis and massive swelling developing in one of the legs
high calcium level in the blood
increase in blood pressure
cushingoid weight gain and other signs consistent with cushing's syndrome

and the list goes on.

I'm telling you guy, you don't have lung cancer. You're too young, and unless you smoked 5-10 packs of cigarettes a day for the two years you smoked, you're not at risk.

Other symptoms could be: clubbing of the fingers and unexplained weight loss.

Ahhh clubbing!!! good one medphoto! Though, clubbing is one of those symptoms that has to be put in to context with clinical findings as it's not specific. You see it in GI, heart and Lung diseases that involve fibrosis, infectious abscesses or malignancy.

...and unexplained weight loss is a non-specific sign which is related to a lot of cancers. There are still tons of other symptoms of malignancy, but the ones I listed above I did because they are most specific to lung cancer.

Also watch out for numbness or a burning pain anywhere below your waist including your groin. Watch out for any speech difficulties eg extra stuttering. Their are many symptoms but to make sure just get yourself a full body scan (you can buy them whithout a doctor for around $400 but your doctor should be able to get you one).

All the best

Kiddo, while I know you have a reason for saying what you say, I respectfully disagree. There is absolutely no need for a "full body scan", and "numbness" or "burning pain" below your waist is not at ALL specific to lung cancer. There are certain paraneoplastic syndromes that DO include burning pain as one of the symptoms, but in the absence of a clinical history suggestive of lung cancer (i.e. a 30 year smoking history or more) it is virtually useless to count them as suggestive symptoms.

It's always best to follow up with your doctor - get a second opinion if you don't trust the first.

I had the exact same symptoms as you and had an x-ray and CAT scan and they discovered that I had pleurisy and costochondritis. You can look the illnesses up on www.webmd.com which is an excellent reference.

Best of luck to you!

Genners

I am very scared that i may have lung cancer...

for the last year i never have been feeling good when i breath my chest hurts all the time my ribs hurt when i move all the time and i am always weak all the time.

So i went to the doctor and he tells me that all these symptoms are from my high blood pressure.

So then i tell him ARE you sure and he says i am pretty sure that the pains u are having are from gaining weight.

I am 6'3 tall 214 pounds.

He says the reason my ribs hurt also may be from sleeping wrong or a muscle type problem.


So far all i got done was a ekg and a holter mointer to see if my heart was ok.

My chest always hurts i am so sick of this crap am scared i have lung cancer...

I am 23 years old i used to smoke for 2 years but i quit 4 years ago.


What would mae my chest hurt all the time and when i breath in my chest hurts and when i am laying down and try to turn my body it hurts.

If any one knows what is wrong with me please help

also my neck has been soar for one month

I'm new here, but I wanted to add that one possible sign of lung cancer is back pain. My dad was diagnosed late August of '03, and just had chemo cancelled because it turns out the tumor stopped reacting to it. Anyway, one of his first symptoms that he can recal was serious back pain. He was an auto mechanic, and thought he injured his back. His doctor had him try physical therapy, but it didn't help. THen he started having a difficult time breathing. (unfortunately for him, his doctor was an idiot who told him that he definately did NOT have cancer, only to go to the ER because of serious pain... and be told he DID). Anyway, chances are you probably do NOT have lung cancer at this early age, but stranger things have happened. If it really concerns you, go to another dr.. get a second opinion. Or if you wake up to serious pain, go to the ER. They can't let you go til they find out what is wrong with you. (well, they're not supposed to anyway)

Back pain is actually a pretty common symptom in many cancers that spread to the bone (i.e. lung, bone, kidney, adrenal, breast and prostate). It's not necessarily because of the lung cancer in your father's case, but rather, a result of a metastasis from the lung cancer to his spine.