Tender/stabbing pain in left pec/armpit
 

Hey guys, I’m hoping that someone may be able to help me understand a pain that I’ve been having for 3-4 months now. I’m a 31 year old male. The pain is a stabbing/tender pain/pressure under my left pectoral muscle bordering on my armpit, and is there most of the time at varying degrees. At times it’s also accompanied by nausea (felt in my throat), occasional headaches, neck, shoulder and middle back pain. I also have ankle pain most of the time in both ankles and a bad right wrist (wrist is most likely from a bicycle crash 2 years ago).

In the last year, I’ve been to the ER twice, and both times the EKG and blood work came back fine. The second time, they did a CT scan of my upper left chest and found nothing wrong.

I’ve also visited with my PCP, who did a comprehensive metabolic panel and a couple other blood tests, all of which came back fine. She also ordered chest X-rays, which came back negative for anything wrong with the lungs or chest area.

She referred me to a cardiologist, who ordered a lipid panel for cholesterol. Cholesterol levels came back fine, with all levels bordering on ideal or not worrisome. I also did a stress echo at the cardiologist, and he said that nothing is wrong with my heart.

I went to a gastroenterologist, and he recommended an upper endoscopy, which I just had today. He stated after that my throat, stomach, and intestines looked completely normal and that he took biopsies which I will have the result for in 1-2 weeks. He prescribed me a proton pump inhibitor, because in the last few months I’ve seen my conditions improve on/off with these (not sure if they’ve actually helped or not).

At this point, I’m just not sure where to turn. Seems I have a lot of the symptoms of Fibromyalgia (I also urinate frequently and have anxiety/depression over the situation), but I’m not convinced the chest pain is from that because for one I’m male (mostly females get Fibro), and secondly from what I’ve seen chest/armpit pain doesn’t normally line up with the normal Fibro pain spots.

If anyone has any ideas what may be going on here, I’d love to hear them. I’m going to follow up with my PCP once I get my biopsy results, but want to make sure it’s a productive conversation to move things forward. Thanks so much for reading, and good luck to everyone! I really want this to go away!!

Re: Tender/stabbing pain in left pec/armpit
 

I have the same symptoms, am also male wrong end of the 30s.i get the stabbing pain in left hand side of chest, under arm pit my left arm feels weak. The symptoms gone and go every few weeks but when the pain starts I get other symptoms like fatigue constantly tired and just feeling awful.

Re: Tender/stabbing pain in left pec/armpit
 

Sw77,

Have you considered the possibility of "muscle spasms"? And possibly arterial spasms causing headaches and other issues?

Re: Tender/stabbing pain in left pec/armpit
 

Sw77,

Here's something you can ask your doctor about: "Vasculitis". It is a family of rare diseases and symptoms can vary from one patient to another. It is inflammation of the blood vessels or arteries, veins or capillaries. It can strike randomly anywhere in the body, in one or more places. There can be all kinds of symptoms depending on where the inflammation shows up. One symptom is nerve problems that cause pain, another is headaches. Could be kidney problems, fatigue or weakness, just to name a few.

Vasculitis is a rare autoimmune disease: I went to a Vasculitis support group almost 10 years ago to see what it was all about. In a metropolitan area of about 200,000+ people, only about 8 people showed up who had the disease. And they all said it took years of going from doctor to doctor before they got a diagnosis.

Based on what you said your symptoms are, it might be a good idea to mention this to your doctor and get tested for it, so it can be either ruled in or out.