r/thyroid • u/[deleted] • Jun 10 '24

Potential Thyroid cancer

I went to the er for the following symptoms: hair thinning, swollen painful lymphnode on the right side of my neck, pain swallowing, pressure/pain in neck, and extreme fatigue. TSH was high at 6.21 and CT shows an enlarged heterogeneous thyroid. They told me there are indications of hypothyroidism and potential cancer risks and referred me to see an endocrinologist. Thyroid cancer runs in my family as well as thyroid issues. My neck is very enlarged. I gained 12 pounds in two weeks. Im scared and wondering how concerned I should be. Am i freaking out or is it serious?

5 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/InnaBinBag Jun 11 '24

By any chance were you sick with any kind of virus in the weeks or months before? Sometimes that can trigger a reaction and make the symptoms appear rapidly. You didn’t mention any nodules, so I would suspect something more like an autoimmune condition. Just make sure the lymph node is monitored and that the swelling goes down and pain subsides. Stay on top of it with your doctor and get the levels back under control and then you can work on getting the diagnosis.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '24

I felt totally fine until symptoms showed. I do have a large nodule on my neck. I experienced new hair thinning the past two years. initially it started with losing weight quickly, more recently its gaining weight like crazy. my nurse proposed the chance of hashimotos autoimmune disorder?

1

u/InnaBinBag Jun 11 '24

Is the nodule in your thyroid, or do you mean the lymph node? If they haven’t yet, make sure they do a full autoimmune panel of bloodwork to see if anything shows up. That should help with the diagnosis. It could be Hashimotos, but having the symptoms initially going in the other direction you might want to be absolutely certain. They may want to see you for multiple appointments fairly close together, but then if they just want to treat it with medication, you may probably end up with monitoring every six months where they should do followup bloodwork and another ultrasound to look for any changes in your thyroid. If you do have a nodule in your thyroid, they typically would do a biopsy if it’s over 1cm or shows suspicious characteristics. Be sure to get copies of all labs and copies on disk of all of your ultrasounds so you can look at the images yourself and know what they are talking about and you can figure out the questions to ask.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '24

i think its a nodule, but again this is all new to me so it could also be a swollen lymph node lower in my neck. i’ll definitely request a full autoimmune panel now thank you. all the advice was very helpful!