For the past few weeks I have had severe pain in several areas of my chest and back. At times it will be my lower back (kidney area), other times it will be in the center of my chest near the sternum and everywhere in between. The pain also feels like my ribs are poking into my lungs or that my lungs feel sticky when I breathe. Normal breathing causes muscle spasms throughout the abdomen as if I'm wincing from the pain.

I am not able to sneeze, yawn, cough, hiccup or even burp without such intense pain it makes me cry. If I do burp, it almost seems as though the air is not escaping through the proper channels.... I can feel it in my back (near kidneys).

The other problem I have was mentioned in a previous post... Every now and then I have a sudden intake of air that, like the other poster said, is completely out of sync with my normal breathing. It happens periodically throughout the day, from periods of rest to activity. After the gasp of air it seems like my heart rate speeds up for a few seconds then goes back to normal.

Chest x-rays show no fluid and I am not and never was a smoker.

Does anyone have any ideas at to what my problem may be?

They're SURE it's not pleurisy?

I've had two sets of chest x-rays since Feb 24 (after a brief hospitalization for stomach probs) and neither of them really shows any signs of pleurisy. The first one done in Feb did have *slight* signs of fluid but the new x-rays didn't show anything. DOc couldn't hear anything abnormal with his stethoscope either. Said it sounded fine.

It almost feels like the pain has a lot to do with my muscles around my chest cavity but then again the spasms could be a reaction to the pain.... I don't know.... ????? Any idea? And what's with my burps feeling like the air is going the wrong way? I can literally feel it in my back... like there are air bubbles outside of my lungs maybe?

See that's what makes me wonder if you've got something going on -- chest x-rays are notoriously hard to read and are also bad at picking up small pneumos and pleuritic thickening.

What other tests can be done to figure out my problem then?

By the way, I should also mention that I have lupus but I've had it for 14 years now and my problems now don't seem lupus related.

Can't lupus cause lots of different types of inflammatory responses anywhere in the body? I wonder if your rheumatologist would have some insight into this.

Yes, it can, but he doesn't seem to have any idea what's causing the pain. He's upped my prednisone, which helped somewhat, but the pain when burping, etc, is still a mystery.

If the upped prednisone helps, that sounds to me like an inflammatory kind of pleuritic pain

Pleurisy and pleuritis is very hard to see on a traditional chest x-ray, a CT scan would make it easier to see.

Just asking to see if you have been seen for this yet..How are you feeling now?

Well, just an update for anyone who's interested.... I am still having the same symptoms. Doc can't figure it out. I still can't yawn, burp or even laugh without having severe pain. Since the doc upped the prednisone nothing has gotten any better. Now it even seems like my diaphragm isn't working properly because when I get a little gassy and need to burp, I have to press on my diaphragm to expel the air.

I would really like to find a solution to this problem because it has been going on long enough. I am generally a very happy person and not being able to laugh without crying is killing me. Any ideas on who I should see about this? Is there a specialist I could see?