Swollen Lymph nodes after surgery

Heya TJT,

Welcome to the forum, though I'm sorry you find yourself here.

I'm not surprised that the FNA's came back inconclusive if you had 4 of them in one month! Usually, you leave a couple of months between them to allow your thyroid to heal from the one before. Otherwise, in the later ones you end up picking up the clots, dead cells, and damaged cells from the ones before.

Your lymph nodes take damaged or foreign cells away from the area, and destroy them to stop you from getting sick or infected. So it's entirely plausible that your lymph nodes could swell as it sorts out the cells that were damaged and moves them away to be disposed of. As for how long they stay up, how long is a piece of string I'm afraid. It depends on why it's swollen. So it could be anything from a few days up to a few months.

I would say though, don't poke it. lol. Poking it, pressing it, rubbing it, to see if you can feel it or if it's gone down or not, can actually aggravate it and make it swell. Hopeully it'll go down on it's own, but the only way to know is another ultrasound in a few months to see what it's up to.

Fingers crossed it goes down!

Lass

xx

Hi Lass

Thank you for replying.  The FNA were done in 2 separate appointments,  the first time it was inconclusive so they did it again a few weeks later, but did it 3 times during that appointment because they couldn’t get enough of a sample for the first 2 times!  It was very painful! 

I’m not going to touch it, Lol, I didn’t even know that it was there until I had the appointment, but it could explain why that section is more swollen than the rest of the wound.  The wound from the surgery is still quite sore so other than massaging the wound with bio oil I’m leaving it alone to heal. 

i have a planned appointment on Monday with the consultant so will see what he says. 

Thank you again

TJT