Hi all, hope everyone is doing well and feeling strong.
On June 23rd I had surgery to remove 1 lymph node in my neck.(of the 5 abnormal ones this was the largest but I do not know exactly how big it was)
I was told to see the surgeon again in two weeks (July 7th) for after surgery check up and to get pathology report and Pet scan & ct scan reports.
Doctors office called a few days after surgery and informed me my appointment would be moved as the Doc had holidays coming up so I am now scheduled for July 21st.
On Friday I went to my local emergency room because of swelling at surgery site.
It is not the wound it is deeper in my neck. It is also very hard. There is a hard, large - slightly bigger than an egg - lump in the area the node was removed.
Doctor on duty thought it was a sign of infection, possibly an abcess. But was not sure. Gave me anti inflamatories(sp) and antibiotics.
Asked me to come back in on Monday for another look.
I will be phoning the surgeons office in the morning but I am wondering if anyone else had something like this.
Maybe the swelling & lump are normal or something?
After my husband had his removed, the spot swelled up a bit as well. It has now gone back down to normal size. When he came home, he had an after care sheet. Did your doc give you one of those? It said to watch for fevers and things of that nature. Are you running a fever? That would be a sign of infection as well.
Hi Gregswife, thanks for your reply.
I did not get an after care sheet.
Surgeon & also nurse just verbally told me what to watch out for. I had a fever on Friday but none now so antibiotics must be helping.
My swelling is down now but I still have hard -- egg size lump, so worried about that.
I saw Doctor (general family doc) today. They just want to see if meds start to make lump disappear. So I wait another day or two.
Surgeon is on holidays his office asked me to come into city and wait in hospital emergency room then to request an ENT doc. The city is over two hours away so I just went with a local Doctor.
Anyway thanks for the reply.
I hope your husband is doing well.
I had a part of a lymph node removed from under my arm area. It did swell up a lot, too; it was extremely hard and honestly I thought that my incision site was going to burst from all that pressure. I was told by my surgeon at my follow up appointment that this is due to the fact that after they chopped a chunk of the node off they tried to "seal" the remaining node so it wouldn't leak but that didn't work so now I have a blood clot that would resolve over time (it may take up to a few months). The surgeon tried to drain some of the fluid just by sticking a needle in the incision site but couldn't get anything out. He said to take Motrin for 7 days and that did help. After a few days my incision site started to leak with some yellowish looking fluid but they said not to worry as long as I don't have fever. It is much better now, the swelling went down significantly.
I hope this helped. Let us know how your appointment went.
Thanks Kama, that sounds similar to the lump I can feel.
I am anxious to see the surgeon but that will not happen until the 21st. I hope my pathology reports are in this week and that I can get the results from my family doc.
Will just keep waitin. I still have no fever so that is good.
Take care
Jill