Seeing doctor tomorrow, asking for gallium scan, and the monthly curse arrives

Still going through the neck problem? I've had surgery and am starting up with a new similar problem, hoarse voice, trouble swallowing, pain, swelling, though I don't have any submandibular glands left, I have lymph nodes in the middle still and I'm hoping I don't have to have that out. I guess when the salivary glands go, they stop draining and swell. Its not like a stone in them, I've had that and its local sharp pain, but you know, the choking thing. I found an interesting article about benign hyperplasia of the lymph nodes of the neck being related to old head injuries, which I had. I was stabbed in the temple during a home invasion. It got very infected. Now years later I have problems. Anyway, in this case study, the guy shot himself in the temple with a nailgun and years later he was choking from swollen lymph nodes and had benign swelling due to crapped out lymph nodes from repeated infections that originally started with his injury. I think neck surgery probably causes the same things. I hope everything is ok with your neck and its not serious and I'm glad you are getting the scan, it does your whole body and they can catch other problems as well and other areas of inflammation. It also helped confirm the severity of my sjogrens for my doctors, my eyes were very bad. The pred shots really make my neck worse, I think that any little germ just takes hold and once I get a sore throat, it swells like crazy. Is this what you are experiencing? If you go to a good ENT (mine was also a plastic surgeon) my incision was very small compared to my old one and he was very good. He tried to clear it up with Penicillin first a really high dose like 1500, where most docs do 500. You need pain medicine or you may stop eating and taking your pills is really difficult. I had to write a letter explaining that since I have a 44x more likely chance of getting lymphoma due to sjogrens that they needed to rule this out completely. By giving my doc the letter, you can sue him if he doesn't do something. Putting it in writing helped. Also, I had to make sure I got my cat scan on a really good machine so it would show up. The gallium scan is the best way to prove. If both submandibulars are swollen, then they can't always tell, they compare one to the other. The only reason they kept saying mine was swollen was because I had already had one removed. The ENT guy was cool and gave me roxicet liquid since pills were hard to take and kept me on pain stuff till surgery then gave me something different after. Have you seen an ENT about this? Don't just let them look down your throat, make them do the scans, if the rheumie will order them, that's the best, then go in with the scans to the ENT and make sure they have some plastic surgery background so they don't scar you up bad. I'm glad to hear you are getting to the end of this problem. It took me 9 months to get to surgery, only two hours for the throat to swell up. Will pray for you that you get your scans and that you get this throat stuff taken care of. They need to know you have enough pain to live with and that they have to fix what they can. I hope all goes well with you. The surgery is relatively minor with a good ENT. If your ENT is dragging his feet, you need to find another, I had to. They do have to work around nerves and arteries and stuff and a good surgeon can do it very well, a bad one won't want to do it at all. (((hugs))) and I hope you feel better soon.

Hi redrose, I had that problem for years. When I first started losing pigment, it was in the groin, and the lymph nodes there were like marbles and sometimes I'd get like an abcess or something there where they would try to drain. Now, they are calcified and don't work. I was told it was due to chronic pelvic infections, like yeast infection type things and/or other infections in that region, UTIS whatever. I also had endometriosis and polycystic ovary. I must have some that still work because I light up in that area, but once they found my neck was benign and contained chronic inflammatory cells, they didn't bx the rest. I was told that I would have to see a general surgeon for them to be biopsied and a needle biopsy is generally going to come back inconclusive. I have decided to wait a while, I'm not having any other symptoms and the pain there is long gone from years of going untreated. I also have problems under the armpit, worse when I don't use gel antiperspirant, but sore and a lot lately and some of that has to do with my neck surgery (fusion plate 4 screws, foramenectomy). I think I always have some form of a throat infection going on and since I got dx for hashis I'm beginning to think my thyroid is messed up. I'm glad the evoxac helped your throat. It can also make the salivary glands swell though because it stimulates them, I had to cut back, but mine were shot anyway. I hate pcps for the most part unless they are really good internists, they just take your money and refer you out, if you are lucky. Otherwise, they do nothing. I'm glad you are gettnig the scan, I think everyone with auto immune disease should get one once in a while, that's what rich healthy people do as preventative medicine. I don't think we get rid of infections very well because we're on immunosuppressants, it seems like one turns into another, in another place. I wish the best for you (((hugs))) and will pray for you that you can get good results and that you get a good doc and can get some relief and that its not the bad thing. My throat is killing me again. I swear, it'll be the death of me. I have four big scars so far on my neck. I look like someone tried to cut my head off. Well, let us know what the scan says. One cheesy way I dealt with the lymph node pain was to soak in tub, put heating pad on it, put bengay or tigerbalm or something on it. Sometimes I had to rub gobs of bengay in there it hurt so bad, and it doesn't help much but better than nothing if you get in a pinch.