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I AM SO SCARED HELP ME! LYMPHOMA?

-Excuse my English, I am a 21 year old female from Greece.
Hello, I am sorry if I waste your time for this, but I am honestly desperate!
To begin with, I have always been easy to get sick from anything. When I was little, I had had scarlet fever, food poisonings, chicken pox, allergies to washing machine powders/antibiotics and cats and I have had all my life constipation (though now that I am smoking it has gone away) and my right tonsil is enlarged +Every time I go on vacation I have lowgrade fever.
When I was 17 years old I got the swine flu. This year (2010) after the swine flu was past, I had for several days everyday low grade fever with no other symptom. Summer 2010 I got mononucleosis. From winter 2010 until Summer 2011 I had everyday "back of the head" headaches which my GP translated as stress and bad posture (I used to spend TOO MUCH time on the computer) and since summer 2011 I have been tortured by my enlarged adenoids which caused me having stuffed nose all the time, phlegm in the back of my throat and I occasionaly spit blood. My G.P. gave me this saline nasal spray and since then I had been doing great. Then, in Summer 2012, I started smoking. Since Summer 2012 my adenoids have been giving me a hard time but I get NO blood from mouth/nose and stuff. In spring-summer 2013 I got piercing stomach aches in the upper abdominal area and heartburn. These symptoms lasted for a few days and I thought it was too much smoking. I also have occasional recurring left frontal neck pains which my G.P. said are probably muscular because of the coming-going. In May I had an episode of myalgia (doctor said it was due to infection) which went a way after some hours. In early June 2013 I went on a summer school and had shortness of breath and severe constipation (I always get constipation when going on vacations). I went to a local doctor who examined my respiration and belly he told that my respiration was fine and my impression of shortness was due to stress). The shortness of breath went away after I had a bowel movement after a gastroenteritis which troubled me and many of my fellow students. In my summer vacation in a small island of Greece (mid July- end of August) I started getting worse pains and heartburn in the upper abdomen. I also experienced redness (that lasted for 10 minutes) on face after getting out of the sea water. In the beginning of my vacations I had diarrhea that lasted for 10 days (I thought it was due to a food poisoning and lack of aftercare - I drank cocktails, ate everything a person with diarrhea shouldn't) but my feces remained soft (not diarrhea though) until I returned in my hometown. So I thought it was just traveller's diarrhea. A week after I returned home from vacation I started getting hives after the shower (no matter what the water temperature). I changed soaps, shampoos, towels EVERYTHING...even if plain water touches my face i get full of hives which go away after 20-40 minutes. I also washed my face with filtered water and no hives appeared. And I itch sometimes but it's not excrusiating and it passes after some seconds/minutes. I don't have enlarged lymph nodes, I feel my right tonsil kinda big in my mouth but it's always been that way, I don't sweat at night, alcohol doesn't do something to my stomach. BUT LOOK AT ALL THIS! I am now DESPERATE. Looking at my history terrifies me and I think I have something really serious. Doctor sais everybody gets sick and it's not a big deal. As you can tell I am a severe hypochondriac, but I read about hodgkin's lymphoma when searching for my hives: People ignored changing symptoms for years and ended up with lymphoma. I had MONO which is a risk factor, my immune system doesn't seem pretty good and I am 15-40 years old. I AM IN PANIC! HELP ME! My doctor sais that most of all the symptoms I ever had were a result of my severe anxiety and hypochondria and sais not to worry. My parents think I'm being crazy and over the top too, but I can't stop being afraid. Do you think I have lymphoma or is it just my immune system?

Thank you and sorry for the long post
2 Responses
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1081992 tn?1389903637
COMMUNITY LEADER
I'd also think about asking the doc for an EKG. In the U.S., there is a movement to have everybody who enrolls in school sports to get a EKG to prevent the rare on-field cases of Sudden Cardiac Death. I think that's going too far, but that shows the extent of the worry.
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1081992 tn?1389903637
COMMUNITY LEADER
Hi, don't think that you have Hodgkin's Lymphoma, but I also don't think that it's all in your head.

I think that possibly you are suffering from complications caused by the scarlet fever in your childhood. Start your research there, then be sure to also look into rheumatic fever - which is an after effect of the the strep bacteria that causes scarlet fever and involves various inflammatory and auto-immune conditions. It's sort of like having an allergic reaction to an infection. The body then attacks its own organs as if they were the infection - cross reactivity of antibodies. You might have an atypical case of rheumatic fever, which means that you don't necessarily have all the classic symptoms - like joint pain

One example of many that are possible with you: Your shortness of breath could have been from anxiety, or it otherwise could have been from myocarditis when your own immune system was inflaming your heart muscle. If you had myocarditis, it's very important not to undergo vigorous physical activity at the time, and even long after. When young athletes die on the field, the 2nd most common cause is myocarditis. Ask your doctor if he/she will do an EKG.

Abdominal pain is also involved in some people, etc. Many other things like rashes, low grade fevers.

I don't think that you are a hypochondriac, I think that you have physical causes (but not cancer). It's a good thing that you did make your post so long and detailed.


Or it's possible that you had Kawasaki Syndrome, which causes redness and possibly was misdiagnosed as Scarlet Fever. Either way, we're talking about unusual immune system conditions.


Btw, hives are caused by histamine, which is an immune system chemical.
Antacids for stomach pain, like Tagamet and Pepcid, are really antihistamines. Also, histamine is a neurotransmitter, and is involved in anxiety reactions. See the pattern?

Also btw, almost everybody has had the Epstein Barr Virus, but not everybody has a super strong reaction to it. You should ask if any family members have had unusual immune conditions, like lupus or Raynaud's or rheumatoid arthritis, etc. You might have trouble getting a doctor to look into the possibility of an unusually reactive immune system combined with the early episode (Scarlet or Kawasaki) that created all the problems years after.

(Please make a short response if you read this, It becomes discouraging to make long replies to people and not know if the reply was ever even read. Thanks.)
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