Don't stab me

I think I've found the name of another one of my maladies.

Last night, after a few hours of sitting on the couch, I was feeling a bit stiff, so I took a biiiig stretch and oh, it felt nice, until the stretch was over and the pain stabbed me in the chest. First thought? 'Mgnph! not again.' Close eyes, breath shallowly... 'I wonder how long it'll last this time?'

When I talk to doctor dad about it, he always says it's probably a small fracture in my ribs that is aggravated by pressure or sudden movement and all I needed was some rest.

I figured I'd try looking it up this time though... to see if there was anything else I could do to make the pain go away. Whether or not Wikipedia is the place to go for medical issues is definitely debatable, but I found a page describing Precordial catch syndrome:

And read these words: "Although deep inhalation during a PCS attack will likely cause an increase in pain, many have found that forcing themselves to breathe as deeply as possible will result in a "popping" or "ripping" sensation which quickly and completely resolves the PCS episode."

Well... why not? I guess I could try that. Deep breath in, deep breath ouu.... ch! Three failed attempts later I was ready to just go sleep it off. It hurt too much to actually complete the whole breath out. But lying down seemed to make it worse. So one more time... Deep breath in, deep breath... out.

All the pain was gone. Nice! Smile. Sleep.