Hello, i just joined this forum after weeks and weeks of reading the support available on here. For background knowledge I'm 18/F, been healthy my whole life apart from a surgery when I was a baby. Like many people on here, I'm worried sick about my lymph nodes.
I'm really skinny and I've been able to feel one lymph node on either side of my neck since I was 14, but I played with the one on the right side so much that it feels much much bigger, it never went fully back down to the original size, and I poke it so much that it can feel sore. The other night my anxiety really peaked and I ended up crying to my parents about it (a bit lame I know, since I'm technically an adult at this point). My dad felt my lymph nodes, he couldn't feel the big one so he told me that I've got nothing to worry about. He had health anxiety really badly a few years back, so he was trying to comfort me by saying if there were any problems after 4 years with that node, I would be extremely sick by now and the node would be the size of a golfball.
So I was reassured...for about 2 days. I've got a slightly sore throat at the moment and I had been poking the node yesterday, so it's no wonder it feels like it has swollen today. But in the last four years, the node has never gotten bigger, to me it feels like 1.5cm or maybe even 2cm, if I leave it alone for a few days it shrinks, and I don't have symptoms like weightloss, fatigue, night sweats etc. My local GP is closed due to coronavirus so I can't exactly go there for reassurance, but I don't even know if it's worth seeing a GP at this point, since my node has been the same for 4 years. I can't shake the fear of lymphoma, especially low grade lymphoma, which I heard can take years to present itself.
Any reassurance would be very much appreciated, during this whole pandemic I feel like my anxiety is reaching an all time high.