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Enlarged mediastinal lymph node plus a bunch of other random stuff!

A month and a half ago I had a CT done because there was a concern I had a blood clot in my lungs. There was no blood clot but an enlarged (3 cm x 2cm) pretracheal lymph node was found. Two weeks later I had a PET scan and it showed I had a large pericardial effusion, as well as several other “hot spots” in my cervical and mediastinal lymph nodes, however the doctor felt it was most likely to inflammation and infection. The immediate concern was the fluid around my heart and I was hospitalized. They drained the fluid and everything came back “normal” so they don’t know what caused it, however they didn’t seem overly concerned and said something it can just happen from an infection... but I was not sick so I don’t feel good about that. Some labs came back abnormal, but just slightly so again, they were not concerned. I am to have a repeat PET scan in October. I seem to be the only one worried about lymphoma. I guess I am looking for support, advise, or to see if anyone has experienced anything similar? Prior to this I was (am) a healthy 36 year old woman.
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1081992 tn?1389903637
COMMUNITY LEADER
Hi, can you post the CT report? Was it with contrast?

I think that the fairly large node would be more worrisome if it existed without the pericardial effusion.  But instead, going with everything that is there, the thinking of the docs probably is like this: whatever caused the effusion also is causing the node. It might be an infection (even if you didn't feel any infection effects). If not infection, then some errant immune activity - which seems more than a little likely since there were not signs of infection (nor cancer cells) in the effusion fluid.

The docs probably have seen similar cases, where it even sometimes just goes away on its own.

A re-scan in just 2 months is fairly short. So they're not being merely casual about this, a casual approach would be 6 or 12 months. A needle biopsy doesn't seem warranted at this moment - even if it's not forbidden because of bad positioning.

I would choose to look at the October scan as a chance to verify that there is nothing really bad going on.

Do you have odd immune conditions in your family history?
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