I have had a cold recently that just won t seem to leave me. It s been a week and a half. Others say it takes 3 weeks to get rid of. Anyway here s the deal. I keep going outside to work on stuff whether it s working here at my place welding together livestock fencing or going to work for other people doing heavy duty yard work. It s cold outside and it keeps affecting me to the point that I feel like I regress into being sick again. Then I get sicker and can t really do much for a day or day and a half til I feel better. My lungs have slightly ached while I ve been sick, kinda like I ve felt in the past when I ve been sick. This morning I woke up and they hurt a little. Today I went to chop down trees for someone and was carrying logs and big branches and was working outside and progressively it became more and more painful to breathe in. So painful it was debilitating. Breathed in, and sharp crazy pain. Way more painful than breaking ribs or anything. Breathed out the pain eased up. If I held my breath there was no pain at all. It s only in the lower right lung. I have had no blunt force injury to the chest cavity. My Mom s a SICU nurse and listened to my heart - said it sounds good. But said that there is a little noise in the lower right lung though where it is painful, like there is a bit of Pleurasy rubbing. But she said that my breathing overall sounds pretty normal. She gave me some ibuprofen and some other anti-inflammatory stuff (prednisone) that should help, and told me to rest and stay away from activity for a bit. She thinks it s Pleurasy. Oh one more thing. I sometimes feel an almost slight popping sensation in that lung when I breathe in deeply. She told me it s most likely Pleurasy and not a lung clot. She said a clot would come on suddenly and not have quite the same symptoms. I layed down for a couple of hours and the pain is tolerable now. I have pain still but not so debilitating. I don t feel like I m going to die now. So overall, pain started around 12noon and got way worse til 4:30, till I could barely walk around. I stopped working, rested, for a couple hours, just woke back up, and the pain has eased up. It s 7:30 now and I feel like I m no longer going to die. It s one of the worst pains I ve ever felt and I do landscape and have been in some pretty painful situations where I put my body to the max. Okay here s the question: I didn t tell my Mom that I m on spironolactone and estinyl. I m not ready to come out to her about being transgendered. A possible side effect of these is that there can be blood thickening. Do you think this sounds like something that could be causing the pain? I imagine I m physically active enough and drink enough liquids to keep from having blood clotting problems. But I want someone s opinion. I mean I have had a really bad cold recently which could cause Pleurasy I suppose but could it be a clot or pulmonary embolism? or something else? I haven t had any real side effects from the hormones I m taking. I don t have insurance and can t afford to go to doc visits or any expensive testing. I asked my Mom about Pulmonary Embollism stuff as a possibility and she said it s most likely not that because the pain has eased up so much. She said that she would talk to the residents at the hospital she works at and see what they say. Anyway, do you think I have anything to worry about regarding taking the hormones? I am an otherwise very healthy person.