Finally healing

I'm finally feeling like my Costochondritis is going away. Over the past year it has been a very, very gradual recovery, and I think that's where the main problem is. The various doctors I went to see all seemed to believe they had an immediate (~1 month) solution to the problem. I'm amazed that they must not have been taught in med school (or maybe they forgot) that cartilage takes a very long time to heal. A quick review of the wikipedia page for Cartilage and one can learn that cartilage does not have a blood supply and therefore takes a very long time to heal. It can take your body 6 months to 2 years to fully repair damaged cartilage, and this seems consistent with my experiences. Where muscle damage can be healed in a matter of days, the process for healing damaged cartilage should be measured in months. This means it can be difficult to tell that the damage is healing at all.


This whole experience has left me a bit disenchanted with mainstream Health care. It seems that many doctors and other healthcare providers don't spend the necessary amount of time to properly diagnose, understand, and care for less common injuries. I've read numerous other stories about Costochondritis and the related Tietze's syndrome and most doctors seem to have a hard time dealing with these problems.


I think when dealing with any type of inflammation it's also important to realize that inflammation is the body's natural healing response. If part of the body becomes damaged, the body automatically responds by sending blood and nutrients to the damaged area. However most healthcare providers automatically respond to any inflammation by trying to reduce or remove it. But for many conditions, the best choice is to just let the body do what it needs to. Primitive man for thousands of years didn't have easy access to ice when they were injured. Instead of the old adage "use (R)est, (I)ce, (C)ompression, (E)levation", how about just (R)est? I have a feeling that in many cases the I.C.E. parts are just to help our minds feel like we are actively doing something for the healing process. Anyway, that's just my two cents.