How could I have broken ribs in the past that I don't know about?

@Dutchess_lll Maybe happened at birth? I’ve had three broken ribs as an adult and the discomfort is hard to miss.

I was completely unaware of it!

@Dutchess_lll Lucky you. Mine hurt so bad for a month with not stopping. Not even t-3s helped.

That’s my point. My ribs never hurt like that that I remember. I never damaged any that I remember. So why am I showing old evidence of broken ribs?

@Dutchess_lll I will take a wild guess and say that the CT scan might be in error. Maybe if you can spare $1,000 for a MRI and go deeper. I hope your insurance covers it. Or you can file it under unsolved mystery and let it go.

A MRI will KILL ME! Or I’ll break the machine. I’m bionic like that.

@Dutchess_lll Ok Then . You can always ask your doctor for your childhood records and see if you had an injury when you were little.

You can also ask your elders in your family if you ever broke your ribs as a infant.

Either that or you have a high threshold for pain.

Oh. My childhood records are scattered from Texas to. Washinton State to Florida to Kansas. In Texas, Washington, Florida, Kansas to get childhood records from the late 50s through the 60s…. um. No.

@Dutchess_lll Oh ok. I suggest letting it go for now.

It happens more often than you might think.

I broke a rib using my rototiller. It hurt alot but eventually healed by itself. Do you recall “hurting yourself” in that area at any time? Were you ever hit while playing baseball? Or falling off your bike? or anything that hit that hit you in the chest?

I heard you can break a rib by a bad coughing fit. Do you cough a lot? Do you have issues with your bones where you have osteoporisis or low Vitamin D levels (which can cause weak bones)?

Apparently they are old breaks. I was so hard working and so active. I played volley ball and stuff. Competitive coed, full floor contact volley ball. I moved very heavy stuff by myself (a washer and dryer down a flight of narrow, steep stairs, for example.) I guess it could have happened anywhere in my long and active life.
Upper right is kind of odd, though.

There are more people walking around with healed undiagnosed rib fractures than you can count. And kids in particular are understandably notorious for such conditions. Active kids will dismiss aches and pains in a heartbeat if only to avoid the penalty of adults sidelining them from the fun. I can remember in the summers of my youth, nothing short of death or crippling immobility was allowed to penetrate the screen of fitness erected between me and my parents. Thinking back, I’m convinced most parents would be horrified at the risks their kids take as matters of routine.

LOL! I so hear you! They simply did not watch us like we watch our kids today. My neighbor got a minibike. We got ahold of some construction spikes, those w 2X wooden stakes they use to mark boundries…they’re cut to a point at one end. We’d ride around on the minibike in the empty lot next to my neighbor’s house and THROW SPEARS AT KIDS HIDING IN THE GRASS!! All any adult had to do was look out the window to see us! But they never did.

Same here. I only brought the more serious owies to Mom. The rest we just shook off.
I seriously cut the top of my ankle on a bike fender. I knew it was bad because I could see my tendon moving back and forth in my ankle as I hobbled home. I could have hooked my finger in there and twanged it! It was cool.
I went in the back door to the kitchen where Mom and Dad were talking and said, “Mom!”
She never was good at hearing the inflection in the voices and she said, “Don’t interrupt!”
“MOM!!!” I yelled! That got her attention.

Good girl

One time, when I was 12 or so, we were with our cousins at our cousin’s lake cabin. There were floating docks off shore and they had gotten brave enough to dive and come up underneath them and they showed us. It was really cool and watery and green. Kind of mooky. We hung out under there for about 5 minutes.
My folks were on shore idly watching…..man if one of my kids dove and wasn’t back up in 2 minutes, at least, I would have FREAKED!!!

Very common. I have an orbital floor fracture from getting hit in the face with a baseball when I was a kid and I didn’t know it until a few years ago

“Orbital floor…” so it whacked the bottom of your eye socket?

Whacked my eye trying to catch a fly ball when I was 9 in little league. Got a black eye. Apparently it also fractured my orbital floor

Ok. What exactly is the orbital “floor”?