Hello everyone,

I am currently undiagnosed, but I have surgery scheduled to remove a 7mm hard lymph node next week. My story so far, about a year ago, I felt a small pea sized hard cyst-like thing on my right neck. There was a corresponding small bump, harder to feel though, on the left. I went to see an ENT who felt all of my lymph nodes in my neck, and too small to even be FNA biopsied. He said it was nothing, and that even all of his colleagues in their head/neck surgery practice would disregard it as so. It was smaller than 1 cm, moveable, and spongy (the later of which I highly disagreed). He said to come back a few months later if it got bigger. It didn't, and I never returned.

Fast forward a few months ago, and I feel it again and it's still there, about the same size maybe a tad bigger, but there is a new extremely small sized lump above it. On the other side, the lymph node that I also noticed has gotten bigger. I was pretty shocked when I was able to grab the whole thing between my finger and thumb, and roll it around. It felt like a marble. Even the more shocking thing is that I also noticed more recently a bunch of hard lymph nodes under my chin. This is not looking good.

I find another ENT and schedule a visit. He ultrasounds everything, and says the one I noticed a year ago is a lymph node, 7 mm, but moveable and he thinks it's spongy (I don't understand why these guys dont grab them between the skin instead of pushing them against SPONGY muscle). The one on the other side, though, is 9 mm. He also finds a bunch of superficial lymph nodes under my chin. He thinks they are nothing, and that we should play the wait and see game in 3 months. He says the lymph nodes have sharp defined borders, are smaller than 1 cm, and feel spongy and moveable. He thinks we will just be biopsying lymph tissue. I leave feeling a bit perplexed and look up more info.

So, I found a study in a medical journal that shows that in their sample, contrary to wide held beliefs, sharply defined lymph nodes are much more likely to be metastatic cancer instead of reactive lymph nodes. Only in much advanced stages, when the cancer is beginning to invade surrounding tissue, does the fuzzy border start to appear. Also, the 1 cm diagnostic criteria is often not a good indicator of cancerous lymph nodes. So, I schedule ANOTHER appt with another ENT.

After some discussion, he thinks I should just have an excisional biopsy of the 7 mm lymph node. He did a scope, found nothing, said everything looks normal. He also said that usually, metastatic tonsilar and BOT cancers present with one or two very large lymph nodes. He says I have several diffuse smaller ones. Personally, I've read many stories of people who have had visible tongue cancers, and several small metastatic lymph nodes found during neck dissections. I don't mention anything since he thinks it's best if we remove one and get pathology on it.

Personally, I think this is cancer. It's definitely not cysts, since we already know they are lymph nodes via ultrasound. It's not an infection since I've taken antibiotics a year ago for this and it did nothing. I also know that I have oncogenic HPV, which is a well known etiology. I just find it odd that it has been a year since I found this little hard ball in my neck, and it hasn't really gotten any bigger; or that any visible oral symptoms have shown; or any of the common head and neck cancer symptoms have appeared (ear pain, bleeding, nasal fullness, asymmetry). I am actually kind of pissed that I didn't push for a biopsy earlier.

Oh well, we'll see by the end of the next week. Sorry for the rant.