Hi there, first time posting here. I'm a 27yo man. Wondering if any of you can shed some light as I feel paralyzed with worry. Here it is.
Oct '19 - I had a bacterial infection for which I took penicillin for a week. It helped but seemed like it wasn't enough.
Nov to Jan - I was basically on and off being ill, taking paracetamol and coughing but no fever.
Early Nov - That's when I first noticed a had a swelling perched on my left collar bone that has to this day not gone down.
Jan to Feb - About of month and a half of being healthy though that supraclavicular lymph node stayed swollen.
Mid March - Fell ill practically overnight with mild to mediocre shortness of breath and extreme heaviness in my chest. I thought it was Covid and talked to 111 about 5 times but was never tested and had no fever and almost no cough at all though I did have sore throat.
May - My shortness of breath (which came and went on episodes followed by sharp chest pain) got worse and I was prescribed doxycycline which helped almost immediately, but then I relapsed and was again prescribed more doxycycline. All this was done over the phone and I hadn't had any contact with a doctor nor been tested for Covid.
June to July - I was more or less healthy, no shortness of breath or pain but my lymph node was still large as always.
Late July - Finally met with a doctor, specifically for that lymph node. By then I also had a swelling around the lower end of my sternum - don't remember when I first got that but it's rather large (maybe an inch in diameter) and I mismissed it as Xiphoid process. I never felt it as being at any point small - rather, it seemed that a bone piece that had previously been hidden was now visibly protruding. The doctor arranged for a blood test on that day (the results of which were all normal) and said that the lymph node swelling warrants an ultrasound check. Interestingly my blood test included a check for Covid antibodies and it turned out I had none. Of course I may have had them earlier since as far as I understand they only linger for a month or two.
The situation now is that I cough occasionally, wake up sweaty sometimes, and sometimes have mild shortness of breath, especially at night, along with some pressure on my chest. I have not had any fever this whole year. No apparent weight loss either. My lymph node has sometimes been very swollen to the point where you can see it in the mirror, but then it would return back to its normal swollen size over the course of a day. It feels immobile and hard to the touch. It turned out that the doctor had forgotten to book me for an ultrasound *rolling eyes* and so I'll be having a phone appointment with him on Sept 9th. Usually I am very healthy but these past 10 months I've repeatedly been up and down which annoyingly overlaps with the pandemic. My worry is that these infections might be due to a Hodgkin's lymphoma because it's been 10 months and even when I've been healthy in that time period my lymph node has remained swollen.
Any thoughts? Thanks for reading this long-winded post...
