Hi All.

I'm really new to this site & please forgive me if I pour all my anxieties & struggles into this forum but I am really struggling with dealing with my emotions right now & I need help.

I'm a 37-year-old male who I thought was reasonably fit & healthy. I have had some growths on my body before but I have had them scanned & they turned out to be lipomas.

The week before Christmas, I noticed that there was a tiny rubbery lump in my left pectoral just above my ribcage. I had no other symptoms. It was soft & movable which I thought was a good sign but just to be on the safe side, I went to my GP.

He checked it & he seemed reasonably OK about it but referred me for an urgent ultrasound with my local hospital.

Today, I went for the ultrasound & the sonographer was a nice bloke but what concerned me was he was taking so long to look at the images. When I told him that my doctor thought it was a lipoma, he told me that it was actually my lymph gland.

My heart stopped when he said that.

When I asked him what he thought it was, he said that it was too small to tell immediately. He said 'nothing particularly nasty stands out to him' but he will need to refer my images to a specialist & I should get the results early next week. When I looked up the symptoms, it all pointed to non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

I burst into tears outside the hospital. I have a wife and a 4-year-old daughter & the thought of losing them broke me. I couldn't go back to work & I've been a mess at home every since. Looking at Google has raised my anxiety levels 10 times. I don't know if I can wait a week for the results & my head is spinning.

Please help.