hi! i'm kind of helping posting here will ease my anxiety.
backstory - when i was 15 and in the midst of doing my gcse's (2015) a hard fixed lump appeared behind my left ear. i was very depressed at this time so didnt care to see a doctor.
a few years later, i started getting more. one on the left side at the back of my neck, then one on the back of my right shoulder. they swelled at first due to infection - i assume - as they were tender and painful. when the infection was over they stopped hurting but never went down fully and remained hard and fixed.
at this point i finally went to my doctor as i was getting meds for my anxiety, he had a feel and said sometimes lymph nodes just dont go down after infection. so i left it at that and soon after this appointment got my meningitis jab (i was 19 i believe). after i got my meningitis jab, it made a lymph node on my collarbone and a lymph node on the right side of my neck swell up and the same thing happened, they never went down fully.
i saw the same doctor again about a month later while i was having my check up for my ssri's. he said he didnt know what it was and asked me what i thought it was? i didn't know how i was supposed to know what it was since i'm not the doctor here lol. i'm now 22 and think a lymph node in my arm pit may be acting the same but is harder to tell.
i'm going to the doctor again soon and demanding a biopsy as this has been making me sick with anxiety for years. i have no idea what could be wrong with me other than indolent lymphoma. the nodes do seem to go up and down in size every now and then too. i've not heard of an autoimmne disease acting like this so how can i do anything but assume the worst? i've also had quite bad fatigue since i was a teen too, i sleep 12 hours most nights and get the odd day where even brushing my teeth and showering is labour intensive. very different to mental illness fatigue. (but i was diagnosed with post-viral ME when i was a kid so always put it down to that even though i almost fully recovered until my teens).
i'm also worried that if i DO have cancer, the outlook might be worse because i didn't get tests done years ago. has anyone else experienced the same??
