Hello,
I am 26 years old and a few weeks ago I had increased swelling in my neck. It got very big, and I also found a few swollen lymph nodes along my jaw. I did not feel sick at all, and had not been sick in about a year. I work from home and do not go out very often. I sent a picture of my swollen neck to my mom and she sent it to my sister who sent it to her doctor who said I needed to be seen as soon as the office opened the next morning. I didn’t even consider it could be something serious until that point.
I went to the doctor the next morning and she felt around and ran some blood tests, and also sent me for a CT scan with contrast that same day. I got the results back a couple hours later and also a call from the doctor. The CT scan found multiple issues. Swollen lymph nodes in my submental and submandibular regions as well as an anterior mediastinal lesion. I will try to include the ct report and pictures of my neck.
Symptoms wise I haven’t had many. I have a connective tissue disorder that can cause fatigue and I do have really bad fatigue but I thought it was just from the connective tissue disorder. I have been having chest pains for a couple months now. It feels like the pain everyone gets where sometimes you inhale you get a really sharp, painful feeling above your heart when you inhale but lately it has been lasting several hours or days at a time. Also some chest tightness and shortness of breath. I’ve also had occasional night sweats but I feel like I can explain that away cause it gets hot in my bedroom. So nothing very obvious. I’m always dealing with some type of medical issue because of the connective tissue disorder so I don’t know, I just assume every issue I have is due to that. I also have asthma so I thought the chest issues was from that. I was very surprised to hear they found a mass in my chest.
The doctor referred me to an oncologist who I saw a week later. She ordered a PET scan to find the “best hotspot” to biopsy. I just got the PET scan done yesterday. I find it strange they order the PET scan before doing a biopsy. From what I’ve read the PET scan is usually done to stage the cancer once a biopsy has confirmed it. I still don’t have a date for the biopsy. I know that it could be due to an infection or possibly an autoimmune disorder… but from everything I’m reading it is not a good sign that I have the mass in my chest. Should I give up hope that it’s something other than cancer? This waiting period has been so hard and so stressful. It’s all I can think about and it’s really affecting me. I hate not knowing how I should feel about this I keep going back and forth thinking there’s no way I have cancer to thinking there’s no way it’s not cancer…
