About 5 weeks ago, when I was in the midst of a cloud of grumpiness, I discovered a small lump on the side of my neck. Do you know when you google, “lump on neck”, it pretty much means that you have lymphoma. So my heart sank, not only was I dealing with fundraising, my job, the kids, the house, I was going to have to find out that I had lymphoma and that it was going to be bad.
So I trundled off to my family physician who said that it’s one of three things: 1. a benign growth, 2. a response to an infection or 3. cancer – and he said all three with equal weight in his tone of voice. So he said that we could do three things – wait to see if it got bigger, take a course of antibiotics or see an ear, nose, throat guy. I asked if I could do all three. So the antibiotics did nothing, it took me 5 weeks to schedule the ENT guy, so in essence I was waiting to see if it got bigger and on Halloween, I finally got to see the specialist – who assured me that after feeling lumps on necks for 35 years and my particular lump for a few minutes, this was a lipoma – a benign cluster of fat which has probably been there for a million years. And he said if it was cancer, it would have gotten bigger over the course of the 5 weeks I’ve been poking at it. (It has gotten some intense poking over the course of 5 weeks.)
I’m quite relieved and happy, of course. Sometimes I think life is like dodge ball, you see all those balls coming at you, ready to knock you over, some of them miss you and some of them hit you full force on the noggin (or lymph node).
A lump on my neck would make me grumpy too. You keep an eye on it even though you got a clean bill of health.
Doris, It runs in Lee’s family. Dad had lots in his back about 30 years back. Doctor removed them. Now he has lot of skim tags.
Happy to know everthing is OK.
Doris, it has been there for 35 years! How come, as your parents, we didn't know that at all.
Besides, lumps and skin tags, watch out from my side for bad temper (grumpyness), minor suspecious, high blood pressure, like to eat & sleep, pretty lazy sometimes. May be I have more but I don't know or don't like to admit 🙂
Oh, don't trust the specialist but verify early on.
I think both you & Jeremy, though at relatively young age, still need to have regular physical. Some of the bad stuff can be tackled more effectively with early detection.
In addition, on other subject, talking about my good traits. There is one more bad one that I forgot to mention is "lack of communication" Sometimes, without communication, what I think and perceive may entirely miss the boat. Upon recognizing missing the boat, I have a tendency to insist staying in my direction. Pretenting that I am not a fool. But, in my heart, I know that I am a fool! It took me a while and a lot of efforts to make sure that this doesn't happen to me again. At least, to keep to a minimun.