Enlarged node-no other symptoms?

Flip a coin.....

While your node does not "scream" lymphoma, anything is possible.  Probably the best advice you could receive is to get the biopsy and let that settle it, since only a biopsy can definitively determine cancer.

I was diagnosed with advanced, widespread HL in 2009; it was basically everywhere lymphoma can go.  At that time I had normal blood labs, and had never felt a node anywhere.  My GP had difficulty finding a node anywhere after my horrible CT, but finally said he thought he could feel a little something in my axial (armpit) region.  A surgeon took my biopsy from that armpit a few days later, and it was golfball sized.  There were dozens of others that large, from my collarbone, down in to the pelvic region. I was having heart pain that was diagnosed initially as angina, but which was nodes pressing agains the heart walls.

My point is that while lymphoma is sometimes easy to detect, the absence of symptoms is not really an argument agains it.  Normal CBC results are not uncommon in people who are diagnosed with stage III or IV disease.  Palpable nodes are not always documented prior to diagnosis.  My oncologist told me that all of my nodes simply happened to be deeply embedded.

What is probably almost universal with lymophoma is extreme fatigue; I was needing 12 hours of sleep a day when diagnosed.  The problem with this is that dozens of things cause serious fatigue, so extreme fatigue does not always come to mind for most family medicine doctors.

Itching, like night sweats, is caused by histimine imbalances, and can be lymphoma-related.  So again, it is best to get the scheduled biopsy.

Be aware that even Stage IV lymphoma is among the most curable or at least controllable forms of cancer.  IF it is cancer, you should be able to achieve full remission very fast, and most lymohomas do not relapse. My strain is considered very relape-prone among lymphoma types (of which there are over 40), but even it relapses only at 15%, which means that 85% of people, even with my strain, do not relapse.  So regardless of what the biopsy shows, you will extremely likely be fine, and should live to the 80 or so years of age that is currently the norm for women in the US.  Cure rates for all lymphomas overall in the US exceeds 80%.  Some brain tumors, conversely, have five-year survival rates of around 1%.  There is no comparison.    While lymphoma is certainly never a "good" thing, there are hundreds of other cancers that are exponentially worse.

max

 

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Chronic infection? Current infection? Low-grade infection?

Groin node. Hmmmm. Ask yourself: Have you had any ob-gyn issues, such as UTI or a yeast infection? Were you checked for both? Either will cause lymph nodes in the surrounding area to enlarge, as T-lymphocytes rush to the area, via the nodes, to fight the infection. It is all 100% natural. Your nodes have enlarged uncountable times during your life - it is just that you never noticed them doing their infection-fighting job.

As to the biopsy, do nothing but live life until you have the pathology report in hand. There is no point in getting stressed over something that, at this time, is nothing. Remember also that leaping from a single node all the way to cancer is quite a leap. First thing, before diagnosis: Stay away from Google! To stay sane, commit the following to memory: "You do not have cancer until a pathology report says you have cancer."