CT Results - Please Help

Annabelle2

I had a CT on Wednesday to follow up on a lung nodule found during my diagnostic process in early 2018.

My MO agreed to the follow up just for my peace of mind since I'm having such a hard time moving forward and believing there's really nothing wrong. He was out of the office the rest of the week, I pushed to have the on call doc review my scan and provide me with my results.

The message I got on the web portal states: "Our on-call provider has reviewed your results. She states: Please let patient know her report shows the lung nodules are stable since prior study in 2018, and are therefore thought to be benign. No other concerning findings on the chest CT".

This was at 8:30 yesterday morning. So I actually felt hopeful for the better part of 1 day. DH and I met after work, had a great dinner, on our way to the hockey game I got a message saying the test results had been posted. I thought great, I'll glance at them quick!

Here's what I found:

First it describes the location and size of 3 lung nodules. Not the 1 I was previously aware of.

All good: central airways, heart, hilar or mediastinal lymph nodes, no enlarged axillary lymph nodes are seen, residual thymic tissue, esophagus appears normal, no destructive osseous changes are seen.

Mildly to moderate prominent gastrohepatic ligament lymph nodes are noted. For example, at slice position ... there is a prominent lymph node with short axis measurement of 11 mm.

WTF??? So I go to google, find very little except for gastric cancer information, and that these nodes are supposed to be 8mm or less. My husband (a CT tech for 26-27 years) has never heard of this.

I'm terrified all over again, have a message in to the doctor's office and of course won't hear anything til Monday, but I'm assuming the absolute worst. I've been taking Exemestane since about November, have had some very mild and occasional nausea. I started taking it without food last week to be more consistent (at the recommendation of my MO), and had pretty severe heartburn. I've resumed taking it with food and that seems to have subsided. Could the gastric lymph nodes be that enlarged that quickly due to the Exemestane? Or was that just the tipping point and now I can get my affairs in order.

God I wish I could go back to my old life where I didn't have any medical problems. And where every single thing didn't scare the hell out of me.

Sorry for the length......any insight anyone can provide would be much appreciated.

KBeee

Is it possible those nodules were there previously and you weren't aware? Remember that lymph nodes enlarge for many, many reasons, most of which are not cancer. But if you google any swollen lymph node, cancer always comes up, so most likely it is not alarming. Do keep us posted on what your doc says.