TL;DR:
Good news: my lymph nodes are not concerning.
Bad news: they’re still cosplaying as golf balls.
Good news: No treatment needed
Bad news: I’d have preferred a neck piercing to hauling swollen and attention seeking lymph nodes everywhere.
Full story (and coping-mechanism jokes) below – plus all the bear photographs I took today. I didn’t want anyone to have to wade through a mountain of words just to find out my lymph nodes are normal.

My brain, on the other hand? Still unhinged… evidently.

Waiting Mode

I had put my alarm on to get up for my appointment, but my brain woke me an hour before it was due to go off, panicking that my alarm hadn’t gone off and that I’d somehow missed the whole thing. At least I didn’t have to hear the obnoxious iPhone alarm, I guess. (I have to keep it on those awful nuclear-meltdown sounds or I’ll sleep straight through it.)

Resigning myself to the fact that this is how the day was starting, I gave up on going back to sleep. Cortisol had already shoved my heart rate into “running from a bear” territory, so I headed to the coffee machine and made myself a Tassimo L’Or Americano or two. They’re my favourite machine coffees. Deep, dark, and mysterious, I’d love to say “just like me,” but while I have deep and dark in spades, I’m not all that mysterious when I talk about everything on my blog. I guess the coffee is as bitter as me, though.

I got ready far too early, because that’s all I have: too early or too late. The black-and-white filter applies to everything I do – there is no either/or. Like Garrus Vakarian once said, “Grey? I don’t know what to do with grey.” My thoughts on people though – my values, my morals? Always been a creature of nuance. Sadly, nuance doesn’t help me get ready at a normal, reasonable time; it just lets me arrive either too early or too late.

My son and I thought we should leave early anyway, since the appointment letter said to arrive ahead of time, and I wasn’t entirely sure I’d remember where radiology was hidden within the hospital. Honestly, the place would make a perfect set for Labyrinth – except instead of trying to rescue my baby brother in 14 hours, I’m trying to find the radiology department in 14 minutes before they discharge me. I’m sprint-power-walking down identical corridors that go on forever, half the signs are in Welsh, and I’m pretty sure David Bowie is about to appear and offer me a different appointment slot in three months.

Luckily, with great relief, I remembered where it was – despite the fact everything was painted different colours than the last time I was there. We checked in and sat in the waiting room rather early, with my phone only able to connect to a satellite for SOS. We would have to entertain ourselves. Batter up.

Standing on the Gallows in the Waiting Room

I don’t know what it is about being uncomfortable, anxious, or in great pain, but that’s when my brain decides that Humour-Rhio from the Council of Rhios should take the driving seat. A lowered inhibition thanks to my declining mental health only added to my ability to apply gallows humour to this entire anxiety-inducing situation. Brace yourself.

I’m sat next to my son in front of a wall of posters when I spot a communication board.
“Do you think that’s an NHS Ouija board?” I say to my son.
“What do you think they’d use as a planchette?” he replies.
“Hopefully not the ultrasound wand they’re going to use on my neck. Do you think I could contact all of my long-lost psychiatrists on it? Probably pointless anyway. Bet the board would come back with: ‘You are number 48 in the queue.’ Or, ‘You should have used this board at 8am. It is now 8:01. Goodbye.’”
“Oh my god,” my son chuckles.

The motion-activated lights switch off in all the corridors around us.
“Wow, it got very Silent Hill in here fast,” my son says, horrified after watching too many horror game playthroughs on YouTube.
“Yeah, don’t worry,” I reply, “I doubt there are going to be any monsters jumping out… unless someone totally messed up the CRB check” Then, after a beat: “You know, I’m sure they’ll say it’s for the environment, but I can’t help thinking it’s giving more: ‘We can’t even afford to have the lights on in here, let alone treat you.’”

A woman starts complaining next to us, saying she’s been waiting over an hour past her appointment time.
“How long does it take to take a picture?” she asks the room. “It’s only of my mouth – it’s not that complicated.”
After quietly declaring her “one of us,” I sit and wonder how she’s categorising X-ray difficulty levels.
Mouth = easy
Arm = hard, because they have a tendency to flop around a bit

With no signal except for my phone informing me it could connect to a satellite for SOS only, I started to think this might actually be a blessing. We only had each other for entertainment in the waiting room. The irony of my phone assuring me I could still call for help while inside a hospital wasn’t lost on me. SOS but no WiFi, only NHS posters and fellow waiting-room and waiting-list wanderers for company.

Eventually, after exhausting every joke I could think of (and I blame myself for it taking forever, since I either turn up early for everything or I’m late), we were finally called in.

Interview with a Sonographer

My humour had worked – I’d partly forgotten what I was even in the waiting room for, beyond turning up and making jokes. I hadn’t prepared myself for step two; I’d been too busy performing, so suddenly I was hit with the realisation: Oh no, the whole point was to have a scan… and what that means. My anxiety dialled back up to over 9000. In an instant I went from enjoying the gallows humour to actually feeling like I was standing on the gallows.

A doctor introduced herself and asked me to lie back and bare my neck as much as possible. Immediately, every single vampire movie I’ve ever seen played in my head. Cry, little sister…
She placed the ultrasound slime-goo on my neck with the precision of the 90s children’s show Fun House. She did have nicer hair than Pat Sharp, though.

I looked at my son, who sat in the chair across from me. I’d asked if he wanted to wait outside, but he said, “No, I want to come in.”
“You want to see the inside of my neck, don’t you?”
“YES,” he replied enthusiastically.

He watched the screen with fascination, so I watched him watching the screen. At least one of us was having fun. I probably would have been too, if I could actually see the screen – I’d have been thinking lovingly about the physics of sound waves and also the Sega Mega Drive game Ecco the Dolphin.

After a while of scanning my neck like I was an unruly tin of beans that refused to scan at the Asda self-checkout, the doctor said, “Okay – there’s nothing to worry about. They look normal on the scan, not abnormally shaped or anything, just enlarged. Sometimes that just happens. They enlarge and then stay like that.”
Technically: relief.
Emotionally: still screaming.

I searched my brain and body for that flood of relief – the achievement unlocked: objective complete rush and the “My lymph nodes weren’t actually informing me of my demise” relief – but found nothing. It just didn’t register, and it would continue not registering for a while. I think Humour-Rhio was still in the driver’s seat, because all I could think was: Guess I’m not a witch and can step down from the gallows now.

With that, we left the room – and then the hospital – but not before making silent internal jokes in the lift: “What floor do you want? 6? Ah yes – the number of months you’ll wait for an emergency referral.”

But eventually… FREEDOM.
And also… INTERNET.

The Pumpkin King of Starbucks

My son and I decided to wander around the shops for a while to decompress. We shopped in the way Stereophonics suggested – “I’m just looking, I’m not buying, I’m just looking, it keeps me smiling.” After mostly window shopping, I was finally tempted in Waterstones by a book I was immediately drawn to because of my obsession with Schrödinger’s Cat: In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat by John Gribbin.

I have no need to search for the cat, since I seem to apply everything I deal with to the thought experiment already, but I bet this book is really interesting. I decided I’m going to try reading it over the weekend – maybe it will help me sit still. I’ve been exhausted and restless at the same time; it’s unsettling. Blogging has been helping, so perhaps reading will too.

After also finding Biscoff-flavoured toothpaste – which I apparently just had to have (justified because mint ones always trigger sneezing fits) – and buying a few necessities like more kale because I eat loads every day, we headed to Starbucks.

I ordered my usual Americano – blonde roast, because it’s my favourite – and my son ordered a lime refresha. He was disappointed they didn’t have his beloved sausage bap, but one of our favourite baristas did something really lovely. He approached our table with his hands behind his back, then presented us with a pack of three pumpkin brownies.

He shall now be known, from this day forward, as the Pumpkin King of Starbucks.

I’m not really one for believing in signs from the universe, but considering I hadn’t felt any relief yet from the all-clear, it felt like the Pumpkin King had handed me a celebration instead. I couldn’t eat a brownie yet because of blood sugar reasons, but I was excited to have it later. I thought, maybe then the relief will finally show up, because even sitting in Starbucks I felt nothing – it was almost as if I hadn’t even had the scan. My brain couldn’t seem to understand it was over.

Starbucks is always regulating for my son and me. We can decompress there; it feels like a home-from-home. A safe spot. An anchor when everything outside is overwhelming. The Pumpkin King only added to that comfort.

After drinking our coffees and taking photos of our plushies, we headed home. It was already getting dark despite being only 3 p.m., but thankfully – despite it looking like mid-December – I still haven’t heard Mariah Carey, and it appears Chris Rea has not yet begun his month-long drive. I’m hoping I don’t hear either of them until after my birthday, though with Christmas adverts already on TV, probably not.

The Life-Changing Pumpkin Brownie

At home, I was still stuck in humour-deflect mode – amped, restless, talking too fast, unable to sit still. We were hungry, so we made dinner and watched Harry be a grass on Eastenders. (The worst sin in a London soap. Good luck to him.) I had Thai green curried chicken in my burrito and it slapped (as gen z say, or do they even say that anymore?), honestly.

As I started writing this post, snack time rolled round. I couldn’t stop thinking about those pumpkin brownies. My ED did not want me to eat them; I’ve stared at Starbucks cakes for years and always heard, “ABSOLUTELY NOT.” Even during “good recovery” phases, I avoided them because Starbucks feels like a safe space and I didn’t want to make it emotionally dangerous.

But now I was home, and the Pumpkin King had given them to us out of kindness. It felt rude not to accept that kindness by actually eating it. So I did – and my son did too. It was genuinely the nicest brownie I’ve ever had.

Maybe it was the amped brain, maybe kindness, maybe the fact it was free – but it went down without a fight. Honestly, it’s easier to eat in recovery if it’s free and given with care. Put that on a T-shirt. The brownie gave me a gentle sugar buzz (helped along by the 50g protein burrito foundation), and the extra energy came in useful.

My son and I ended up talking for hours about his life on T. His experience is his – he’s a better writer than me, and if he wants to tell it, he will – but what I learned knocked me sideways. I never realised how many rules society quietly forces on women: how you soften your voice to seem polite, how you shrink to be listened to. I did all that without knowing.

Now, after months on T, he literally can’t do those things anymore – so he’s having to unlearn them. And as he unlearns, I’m suddenly seeing them for the first time. He’s grown up performing these behaviours because they were expected; I did the same. He’s questioning the rules, and now I’m realising… I just followed them.

Helping him helped me, even if he turned my worldview upside down again. That’s kind of his whole personality: he makes me see the world differently, and then I have to rearrange the furniture in my brain to match. I love that about him. I’ve watched him grow, and because of him, I’ve grown alongside him.

After he went to bed, all talked out, I tried again to process the good news from the scan. But it still feels like the scan didn’t even happen. I’ve been writing and talking all evening; my lymph nodes ache from being prodded, yet every now and then my brain whispers, “Don’t worry about that pain – we’re having a scan soon.”
We did.
Today.
Hello??

I am grateful though – for my son, for these conversations about life, the universe, and the patriarchy – for the chance to continue being here for all of it.
I just… can’t quite connect with it being real yet.

One thing I have managed to process, though: Since my lymph nodes are apparently just attention-seeking and not trying to warn me of impending doom, it turns out my drenching night sweats – the ones that soak my hair, clothes, sheets, and take half a day to dry – are probably perimenopause.

Well. That sucks.

I guess this is my 40-year-old life now.
And sure, night sweats and hot flushes can happen in recovery, but I’ve had them most nights for months, and they get noticeably worse when my hormones spike during my cycle, or when I eat spicy food, hot food, or even drink hot drinks. Recovering from hypothalamic amenorrhoea straight into perimenopause is honestly a wild ride. No brakes, no map, just weird and sweaty symptoms.

When All Is Said and Done

My brain still thinks the scan is happening next week, but reality insists it was today – and went fine.
My lymph nodes are just dramatic attention-seekers.

I ate a pumpkin brownie and didn’t spontaneously combust, unlike the people in that Reader’s Digest book I read as a kid that traumatised me for life.
My son and I had coffee with our plushies and later dismantled the patriarchy, fuelled by kindness brownies.

So I guess, even without the emotional fireworks – and with the real Bonfire Night fireworks outside reminding me only of the emotional absence – we’ll still chalk this one up as a win.

Maybe relief will show up eventually, probably when I’m doing something completely unrelated, like brushing my teeth with Biscoff toothpaste and marvelling that such a thing even exists.

Heres the unhinged track for the unhinged post. Doctor Doctor by Just Jack.
Doctor, doctor, can’t you see?
My mind’s been playing jokes on me
And I’ve been trying to save my soul
I’ve been trying to do right
But all I’m getting is the tunnel,
At the end of the line