Intercostal rib pain

Hi every one , I'm Woody , I'm putting this online I case it helps someone else.
I started waking up at 3:00 in the morning with a strange pain in the middle of my thoracic spine it was like someone was pushing a pen into my spine , within minutes my ribs started to hurt really bad . I called it a butterfly effect because the pain emanated from the spine and spread out through my ribs like butterfly wings .the pain was excruciatingly severe . But would subside if I got up and wandered around the house for an hour but would return in minutes if I got back into bed.
This went on for about a week with the rib pain getting more significant and also spreading throughout the whole of the rib cage .
At this point I went to my doctor and after much discussion I remembered my rheumatologist saying about 4 years ago that I had a lot of wear and tear on my L3-L4-L5 joints in my lower back but he was more interested in my upper spine as there was signs of wedge fractures in my upper spine and I might start suffering in time to come .
My doctor was very interested in this and suggested that I was suffering from a neuralgia in my ribs probably caused by the spinal problem and started me on Gabapentin at 100mg in the morning and afternoon and 300mg before bed .
After the first night I woke at 3:30 am with the rib pain , so the pills only helped by half an hour . After Two more nights of this pain I read on pain forums of others with similar pain who were taking over 3000mg of Gabapentin a day , so I increased the doses myself to see if it helped . I increased the morning to 200mg along with the afternoon and tied 400mg for the night .
That first night I slept through till 4:30 an I was quite pleased with that but I was going to run out of pills soon so visited my doctor and told them what I had done, he wasn't very happy that I had self medicated . But was interested in my dosages and effects of it , he then told me that the maximum dose is 900mg a day and could increase the night dose to 500mg . This let me sleep until 5:00 am for a few days then the rib pain started to come back earlier in the night and eventually I went back to the doctor when I was getting up at 3:30 again .
This time I spoke to my original doctor on a telephone appointment and she said that the maximum dosage of Gabapentin I could take was 3600mg a day and increased my dose to 400 in the morning and 200mg in the afternoon and 600mg at night also sending off to the hospital for an appointment for a Dexascan to see the density of my bones . The first night I slept through to 6:00 am and I still am a week later .
I'm hoping that the next time I see the doctor she will refer me to the hospital for a scan of my back to see what's going on

If any one is interested I will post as thing progress from. Her

Thanks for the reply Vicki , I will keep you posted and I will also mention the heart condition as well next time

W.oody

I too have this pain and when I was trying Neurontin I would get good results for a few days and then it came back. Every time we increased the does it got better again and then right back.

Mine is caused from damaged nerves in the ribs from surgery and the only real relief I got was from injections and some help from my SCS.

Praying the Neurontin works for you.

Take care,
Bill