A heating pad may help noticeably — with pain management due to rib cage fractures, related cartilage damage and minor muscle tears — but be careful

© 2016 Peter Free

 

22 December 2016

 

 

I was surprised how much a heating pad helped reduce rib fracture pain in winter

 

The anecdote that follows supports use of a heating pad to relax contracted muscles that aggravate fractured rib pain.

 

But . . .

 

 

A caveat

 

This is a personal anecdote. I have enough medical knowledge (by training) to self-evaluate injuries of this kind.

 

If you don't, do not pay any attention to what I say. See your health care provider.

 

Life threatening things can happen with damaged rib cages. See, for example:

 

 

here — emDocs, rib fractures in the elderly

 

here — Medscape, rib fracture imaging

 

here — Mayo Clinic, broken ribs

 

here — United Kingdom National Health Service, broken or bruised ribs

 

 

In my experience — some rib cage fractures and cartilage tears hurt more than others

 

When I was young, banging my then flexible rib cage was not a big deal. But as a calcified older person, I have fractured ribs a number of times during mountain bike falls.

 

Ordinarily, I don't do anything to manage these injuries. They hurt (sometimes a lot) for a while, and then go away. NSAIDs and I don't get along, so I'm stuck with toughing things out.

 

Coughing, sneezing, laughing — and doing anything that requires torso muscles to stabilize movements — are painful. Laughter is my customary method of coping with physical unpleasantness.

 

This last time, however, I hit the ground with unaccustomed velocity and apparently did more damage than I ordinarily do.

 

Site specific pain ran from the sternum around to the spine. This included two obvious muscle tears, two probably fractured ribs and related cartilage injuries. The rib cage evidently had been pushed posteriorly and simultaneously rotated itself leftward (away from the sternum) during the fall.

 

Afterward, sitting or getting out of a chair and making even simple movements was enough to make me contemplate whether I really needed to do whatever I was planning.

 

Coughing was a disaster. I found myself trying to down-modulate coughs so much that they didn't work for their intended purpose. Which, of course, just extended the number of hacks necessary to clear the respiratory problem.

 

A revelatory "yikes" moment came when I tried to get into bed after the rib ends somehow moved slightly during the day.  I got painfully stuck just trying to lie on my back. I could feel torso muscles trying to keep spinal alignment from moving even the tiniest bit.

 

Too painful to get back up. Hurt too much to lie all the way down.

 

Laughing (uncontrollably) at the predicament just made things worse. So much so that tears began to run down my face. What a loon.

 

 

A couple of days later — insight

 

Being winter, it occurred to me that my torso musculature was more contracted from cold than normal. Perhaps a heating pad would loosen everything up enough to drop me from "yikes" to just "ow" levels.

 

Sure enough, wrapped in a strip heating pad, yikes-magnitude pain went miraculously away. The scope of improvement surprised me.

 

 

Be cautious — bleeding and burns

 

I would not do this (even for myself) within the first 48 hours of injury. Too much risk of aggravating or masking unsuspected internal bleeding.

 

You should also beware the possibility of burns. Especially if you fall asleep.

 

My pad reduces heat after about 20 minutes as a safety measure. I also place the pad over a T-shirt to protect the skin underneath.

 

 

Ice?

 

Ordinarily, I would alternate ice with heat to maximize healing blood flow. But since I am invariably cold during winter, I did not have the gumption to do this.

 

 

The moral? — My thanks to the heating pad "gods"

 

I am not accustomed to a heating pad making such a large difference in pain reduction.

 

But remember — if you don't know what you're doing — see a health care provider.