How do you Find Out if you Have SRS?
Essentially was in a car accident in June of 2024, everything seemed fine at first but a few days after I was in severe pain that got worse and worse in my thoracic until I was bed-bound for about a month. Prior to the car accident, running 20-25 miles a week and lifting weights for about 10 hours a week. Was in absolute peak-shape. I'm 25 years old, male.
After that month I was recovered enough then to resume work still in massive pain. Then reinjured moving a kitchen chair at a weird angle. Another month bed-bound.
Went back to work. Healed up quite a bit - was even able to move heavy furniture although I was still in latent pain and couldn't twist to a bunch of angles. Woke up one day and it injured again after a particularly heavy day of playing with my kids the day before. Another month bed-bound. That time I found a much better research rabbit hole - found this subreddit, then found the costochondritis subreddit. Costochondritis seemed to match better to my symptoms so treated as if it was costochondritis and that helped a lot - although I was missing major symptoms - never had sternum pain ever, always thoracic pain.
Essentially my area near my thoracic is always cracking, and sometimes my top area (near my 2nd/3rd rib) feels stuck and I can feel my muscles slowly move over the area. Other times it feels perfect, and I have absolutely no issues. When it's stuck I'm at like a 5-6 pain level, and I can't bend much at all or pick anything up over 10 pounds. When the issue isn't there I'm at about a 2 on my pain and my muscles nearby my thoracic are very sore, along with all my serratus anterior muscles constantly being sore all around my ribs whether or not it's "stuck" up there.
I'm coming back here after getting into an osteopath which brought the pain down to a 2 for a long time, and kept that piece in place for a long time - but it's clear to me that isn't a permanent fix now. I have to keep going back to have them fix whatever is not working right. I have not been able to lift weights or run again even with going to the osteopath, which indicates to me that this is likely fixing a symptom not a cause.
I believe slipping rib syndrome is a worthwhile rabbit hole to explore at this point. After going to the osteopath I've noticed my ribs used to look perfectly symmetrical around the front - now rib #7 is just... not there anymore on the left side. That seems related to me at this point. Along with on my right side - my bottom two ribs click around the front when I laugh or reach my arms above my head at a certain angle.
I have recently gone in for physical therapy again (I've been in and out of PT for this whole two years now), with a different physical therapist who is trying really hard. Got a bunch of MRIs and I have some shoulder tears on both sides (not full tears, partials) with exactly matching tears - but my physical therapist is stumped and says that they should have healed up on their own by now and that's likely indicative of a deeper problem - so I'm here now.
One last piece of information - I likely have some sort of hypermobility disorder. I have four siblings, and they all have signs of hypermobility (they can invert all sorts of joints), I'm the one that doesn't have any telltale signs. But this whole journey has me suspicious that I have something too and mine just hides a bit better.
Anyways - how do I go down the path of diagnosing or ruling out slipping rib syndrome? This seems complex, can't find any easy "just do this at home!" method.
Money is luckily not an issue, although I have no insurance (self pay may be preferable regardless - and if it comes to surgery I can likely afford out of pocket or at least a payment plan). I'm in Arizona in the United States.