Swollen glands, multiple doctor visits-no answer

Adamn86 · Newbie Joined: 22 Dec 2007 Posts: 4

This is going to be a little lenghty so be prepared.

Just a little background: I'm a 21 year old male. I'm finishing school this spring;life's not too hecktic, as I have enough time to lift weights three or four days a week. I try to eat well, lots of brown rice, chicken breasts, fruit, all that good stuff. I try to keep my drinking too a minimum, but that to me is once a week......yeah not too good right? I also smoke marijuana chronically.

I'm going to desribe the symptoms that I noticed before the swollen glands-which is the topic at hand. I started to get neckaches around this time last year. They were almost daily, very lowgrade, and felt like a tension headache. I felt it predominently in the area at the back-right of my skull. I also had the sensation of sinus pressure. After about a month of this, I went to the University medical center. The physician saw me, and presribed me flonase. He said it was caused by allergies. I apparently have allergic shiners-more darkness under my eyes, all my life. I gave the meds a week, no change. I went back, saw a different doctor and she presribed me two more meds, singular and allegra. At this point I was on all three meds, still no change.

This continued for a few more months. It was now may, and I still had the same symptoms. The aching still continued. I started to feel a very small bump, very hard, directly located ontop of the mastoid process behind the left ear where the ache was. Also my throat began to hurt, very randomly and mildly-sort of scratchy, and a bit sore. I should also say that none of these symptoms have ever caused me to take pain meds. They are more annoying than anything.

I was in my homtown and I went to an urgent care to get another opinion because I felt like something just wasn't right. He apparently found the bump that I showed him, as well as another tinny lump (<2mm) behind the upper left ear. He said it could be a cyst-I go home. My parents suggested I go to my family doctor if it still bothered me. A month later I went to my family physician, and told him about the ache, he felt around my neck, behind my ear-found nothing. So he said it was muscular. Because of the headache, I had a CAT scan done on my sinuses and brain. They both came back normal.

Now fast foward to november-symptoms remain the same. My throat was still midly sore, but more frequently; mostly at night. As a kid I used to get a lot of sore throats, and was diagnosed with chronic cryptic tonsilitis. I went to an ENT specialist, told him my symptoms, he examined me and said it was my choice if I wanted to get them out. I chose to get them out. I had them taken out 5 weeks ago. It went pretty smooth. No bleeding, the doctor told me I healed a bit faster than average. He also checked the lump behind my right ear, and said it was either a lymph node or a muscular structure. He didn't seem to worried about it and told me if it get's larger he could remove it.

I am getting real tired of worrying about my health, and feeling like there is something wrong with me. I feel like the doctors should look into the matter more, something is obviosly not right if I have visible lymph nodes behind my ears. The largest, the one above my right mastoid, is at most the size of a pea. None of them are tender to the touch. They have slightly movable. I also have what feels like a node on the lower left portion of my neck. I don't know if that is new or if I just hadn't noticed it before. It has not been examined.

The bottom line is I seem to be getting all these new developments in my health. I still have no answers. No doctor has ordered a blood test. I do however donate blood plasma, and I am fairly certain they test your blood for infections. To be signed up to donate I had to recieve a full physical. Before I donated, while I had first been hooked up they took a large vile of my blood. Now whenever I donate I just get my finger pricked for protien levels. One of my friends got a call from them that he had hep-fale postitive-but the point is they check and notify you.

Today, my throat doesn't hurt anymore. It's still slightly sore when I yawn from stretching the surgical site. I am now getting the same early feeling I was getting on the right side, on the left. It's behind the ear also. It is not yet as large as the right node. It has been a year, and it seems like they have been swelling, extremely slowly. This would explain why they aren't tender to the touch. So what is this all indicative of? I feel like I am going crazy. Is this cancer? My grandmother has lymphoma. Could it be HIV? Maybe I was somehow given a false negative when donating plasma. This slow gradually swelling is annoying! I sometimes have neck or jaw stiffness. I am not having nightsweats, I am at a steady 210lbs at 6'3. I feel pretty drained during the day sometimes-yet in the summer I managed to work 12 hour construction shift and still workout at night. Is this all in my head? Should I worry and pursue it more? It surely can't be normal to have visible bumps behind your ears.

If you made it this far, thankyou!!

SeattleHiker · Newbie Joined: 08 Nov 2007 Posts: 4

Adamn86,
When you had your tonsillectomy, did the hospital pathology department biopsy the tissue for the presence of cancer? It is possible that you had a certain type of cancer growing inside your tonsillar crypts, called squamous cell carcinoma. This often is the result of an HPV infection that occurred many years ago, that ultimately became cancerous. If so, then the cancer may have spread to your lymph nodes.

Following are a couple of references that will give you more information. I’m not a doctor, but if any of this information relates to your symptoms, I’d have a doctor check it out.

HPV and Oral Cancer – Outstanding article summarizing what is currently known:
Psyrri A, DiMaio D. (2008) Human papillomavirus in cervical and head-and-neck cancer. Nature Clinical Practice Oncology 5:24-30
nature.com/ncponc/journal/v5/n1/pdf/ncponc0984.pdf

One helpful post regarding HPV-related Tonsil Cancer:
cancercompass.com/message-board/message/all,19066,0.htm

Best of health to you,
SeattleHiker

Swollen glands, multiple doctor visits-no answer

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