The Good Cancer

That's Not Right

I was nervous, but I asked my mom if she could take me to the doctor a few days later. Nothing had changed with the appearance of my neck. I was getting more worried by the minute. I kept telling myself that it had to be an easy fix. Something any doctor would jump all over and things would be better soon. I mean, it was just a knot in my neck. What could be the worst? As soon as I asked myself that question, I shut it down. Knot and lumps could lead my mind down a path I didn't want to go.

My sister Allyson had recently gotten her adenoids taken out and was going in for a follow up with her doctor. My mom thought this would be the perfect opportunity to get a professional opinion on my knot. Why not kill two birds with one stone? She was sure the doctor wouldn't have a problem taking a couple minutes to look at my neck and let us know if we had reason to worry or not. I admit the idea bothered me a bit. What if the doctor had a full schedule and would just be annoyed with my mom for asking such a thing?

The whole way there and the whole time the doctor was looking at my sister, my heart reate began to rise. Here we were in front of a doctor. A doctor who may or may not have all of the answers. A doctor who may or may not have bad news for me. My sister's checkup went well and then my mom asked the doctor if she would take a look at my neck.

Within a few seconds, the look on her face shook me to my core. When a doctor looks worried, you know something isn't right. They're supposed to be the calm ones. The ones who know exactly what is wrong and exactly how to fix it and even if it seems like a big deal, they are supposed to make it seem like it isn't a big deal at all. They are supposed to keep you calm. She wasn't doing a very good job.

The doctor tilted her head to the side as she began evaluating me. She asked me to come and sit in the chair where my sister had just been moments before. I have never been the biggest fan doctor's offices, but now I was even more nervous than I had been upon entering. I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself. I looked at my mother and sister. It was hard to read them.

"That's not right..." the doctor paused as she tried to come up with an explanation. "Lymph nodes are part of the body's defense system and will usually swell or become enlarged at the sign of infection. However, your entire neck also looks enlarged. Mom, what do you think?" She looked over at my mother who eyed my neck carefully.

"It doesn't really look enlarged to me," my mother responded. I caught a glimpse of my neck in a nearby mirror. It didn't really seem abnormal to me either. How could this doctor tell that my neck looked enlarged? What if I just had a big neck? How was that supposed to help my self esteem? Some people are just different than others in regards to the size of their necks among other things. Was my neck really that big?

"Well, I'm going to send you for some blood work today and give you some antibiotics to see if that will help. If it doesn't, I recommend that you go see an ear, nose, and throat doctor to get some more tests done." She smiled, her attempt at reassuring me that everything was fine and under control, and began scribbling down something on a piece of paper. She handed my mother what she had written. It was the prescription for my antibiotics and on the bottom, the name of the doctor she recommended we go see. In that moment, I had no idea that this was only the beginning of a series of doctors and tests.

Later the next day, my mom pulled out all of my old school pictures. She had wondered why the doctor thought my neck look enlarged when it seemed perfectly normal to both of us. Nothing was really interesting or puzzling about the pictures until you got to my middle school photos. Between sixth and seventh grade you could see a little bit of a difference. My neck did look bigger and between seventh and either grade, you could really tell. What in the world could this mean?  I decided to stop worrying and just take the antibiotics. It had to be e some sort of nasty bacterial infection. It would go away now that I had medicine, right?