Ever since I was little, I knew that my body was different from other girls, and even boys my age. Yes, there was the obvious difference of girl parts and boy parts, but the difference that I noticed was in my chest. Unlike the other kids my age, my chest was caved in. I didn't know it at the time, but I have a condition called, "pectus excavatum." I'm not a doctor, so this is just my simple explaination, but basically it's a fancy way of saying that I have a caved-in sternum. When I was a baby, my parents had me checked out at the doctor because a lot of times pectus excavatum (PE) can cause crowding on the heart and lungs, which would obviously cause health risks. Luckily, there was nothing wrong with me, and the doctors didn't forsee my PE to be a problem with my heart, so there was no reason to have it fixed.
I was never really self-conscious about my PE. For one thing, my sternum is caved down under my chest, so being a girl, my boobs sort of help to hide it underneath shirts, and I wasn't running around topless, so nobody really saw it. I've never had someone mention that I looked different, or even notice that my sternum looked different when I was in a swimsuit, or a bra. Part of the problem with the sternum being caved in, however, is that it makes my ribs stick out, which I never really minded because I figured that it would just seem like I was so skinny that my ribs were showing. The other thing about having the sternum caved in so far, is that the organs that would normally sit up higher in the body, are pushed down, and this can cause almost a pot-belly effect.
Lately, for about a month or so, I've been getting sharp pains in my sternum, right where my PE is, whenever I breathe. When it started, I was in the middle of a sinus infection, so I figured it was just from all the coughing, but my sinus infection came and went, and the pain is still here. It's obviously not an ideal thing to be in pain when you breathe for anybody, but I'm in college, and I'm a music player. I play a woodwind instrument, so I clearly need to be able to breathe comfortable for my major. I haven't been to the doctor yet because I wanted to do some research, and give the pain time to go away before I jump to conclusions, but as of now, I'm assuming that I'm going to need to have surgery to repair my PE, which is terrifying to me.
There are two procedures that I've found for correcting PE. One is called the Ravitch procedure. To the best of my understanding, the Ravitch procedure is basically where the surgeons take out the sternum and straighten it out, screw it to a dissolvable plate with dissolvable screws, and put the sternum back into the body and attach the muscles together (the cave in the chest prevents the muscles from being attached when the sternum isn't straight). The second procedure is called the Nuss procedure (I'm not sure if it's pronounced phonetically or "noose" because I've heard it both ways) which is where they make two incisions on both sides of the body inbetween the ribs, and the insert a bar, and the bar acts like braces on the teeth and straightens the sternum out. The bar stays in place for like 6 years, and then you have to go back in to get it taken out, but the muscles are not aren't attached in the patient like they are with the Ravitch procedure.
Both procedures are very painful. They both require staying in the hospital for at least a week after the procedure, and initially the patient has an epidural with a continuous flow of pain meds. I've heard that with the Nuss procedure, the patient will have to be on pain meds and antibiotics possibly for the entire time that the bar is in the body which, like I mentioned, could be up to 6 years or more! The Ravitch procedure is the more painful of the two, but it's a one-time procedure, and you don't have to worry about going in to get the bar removed, or adjusted.
I am honestly terrified to do either surgery. I don't even know for sure that it's my PE that's causing my painful breathing, but I can't think of anything else that could be causing it. I'm a huge baby when it comes to pain, and I don't know that I'd be able to handle the kind of pain that is inevitable with either of the surgeries, but I don't know if I'll be able to deal with painful breathing for the rest of my life. All I can do now is go to the doctor and get everything checked out, and talk to her about what I should do, and hopefully get referred to a specialist who might be able to give me a little more insight to what I should do.
Here's what PE looks like from the inside and outside.
