Unexplained breast pain

July 17, 2009 7:30 PM

I had a particularly painful mammogram in January. There were no problems with the results, but after a few days I started having pain under my right breast. I thought it was a soft tissue injury, but it won't go away. Any ideas?

It's a dull pain when I exhale. It doesn't feel like it's in my breast, but rather under it. I was about to make an appointment with my GP a month or so ago, but then I went on a beach vacation, and the pain seemed to go away. So I figured it might be stress related, but now it's back. I'm going to make an appointment with my doctor next week, but has anybody experienced anything like this?

posted by Evangeline to Health & Fitness (4 answers total)

You could always go to an urgent care clinic and see if you sprained, strained or otherwise stressed your ribcage.
posted by aquafortis at 8:11 PM on July 17, 2009

I know someone who had a rib broken during a mammogram - go get seen.
posted by leslies at 4:43 AM on July 18, 2009

Response by poster: It's true the pain was a lot worse in the first few weeks. But the mammogram was in January - even if they did break a rib, would it still be aching now? I've never broken a rib so I don't know how long the pain usually lasts. Can it become chronic?
posted by Evangeline at 6:05 AM on July 18, 2009

I've fractured ribs before and it took almost a year for the dull aching to go away. The last few months, the aches would only occur if it was about to rain. But I feel like you would have had more pain in the beginning. The first 3 days after my accident, I was bed-ridden and then for the next few days it was really hard to get about the house. It took a month for me to even be able to go back to work and even then, I had to take it easy.
posted by MaryDellamorte at 10:28 AM on July 18, 2009