A Lump

Posted on March 22, 2005 in Glands

Today, I consulted an ENT man about a lump at the angle of my jaw. I’ve had it for about two or three years. When I was with my previous medical provider, they felt it and promised to get around to a referral someday. Now and then they measured it. While I was in the hospital a few months ago, a physician felt it. He told me to talk to my GP about it. I made an appointment and my new GP referred me to the specialist I saw today.

They had me sit in a chair similar to the one’s dentists use. The doctor came in, felt the region, and declared that I had a misplaced salivary gland or a parotid mass. It was rarely malignant, he went on, though if I left it to grow for years it could become so. Before he made a final diagnosis, he numbed up the lump with Lidocaine and let me sit for a few minutes. Then he inserted a needle and drew out some of the gore. Part of the extraction went onto a glass slide and the rest into a test tube filled with green fluid, aspirating needle and all. His nurse wrote out the paperwork for a CT scan and sent me home.

An hour later, I got the results of the pathology test: it was benign. “There’s no rush to remove it,” the doctor said. “Anytime in the next two or three months.”

I shrugged. Just another event in a year of medical events. I made the appointment for the CT scan. There’s some chemistry involved that prohibits me from taking glucophage for a few days. Someone will have to explain that to me.

If you can stand the gore, you might find these pictures interesting.