Experience of a child with a swollen lymph node in jaw? Worried 😫

[Catchingrainbows]

It’s been a bit of a stressful few days
DD had a lump/swelling suddenly came up on her face/jaw area. At first they thought it was likely a swollen lymph node and A&E sent us home as they couldn’t do an ultrasound at the time.
But later that day it became bigger, more red and hot, so we ended up back at the hospital. They admitted her onto children’s A&E, did blood tests, gave her IV antibiotics and arranged an ultrasound.
The scan showed it is a swollen lymph node. Bloods and chest X-ray have thankfully come back reassuring/normal, but they also had to do blood tests checking for things like lymphoma and leukaemia too, so it’s all been a bit worrying 😫
They think it’s most likely some kind of localised infection or inflammatory reaction. They’ve also tested for viral causes which take a couple of days to come back.
She’s now on 2 weeks of antibiotics and has to go back for another ultrasound in a couple of weeks to make sure it’s going down properly But hopefully it starts settling soon.
She’s been absolutely fine in herself through it all thankfully, but it’s definitely been an emotional few days. I feel reassured but still on edge until it’s gone completely , the swelling around it has come down but the node is still hard and there
anyone with any experience of this? The lump is around 5cm

Really don’t want to add stress because it’s very rare but the child I know who had a similar sudden swelling did turn out to have lymphoma and was dismissed multiple times by GP’s and even a hospital visit where it still wasn’t detected. Eventually a biopsy diagnosed it (scans and blood tests showed nothing). The child is now ok after treatment but it was time sensitive, so although it’s very very unlikely please do push if it doesn’t go down. Really hope all is well though, I also know another child who had swollen lymph nodes for weeks and it was nothing to worry about. That’s the most likely outcome.

The ultra sound, while not diagnostic, can see if the lymph node is reactive/non reactive so if they’ve said it’s just a swollen lymph the that’s reassuring.
Also bloods, they can’t test for lymphoma but certain markers can come back as abnormal so that's also reassuring. Same with the X-ray.
I don’t have direct experience of leukaemia but I think bloods do comeback as abnormal so something would be seen.

It sounds like they have done quite a few of the tests needed so it’s most likely in response to an infection or virus. The next ultrasound will show some more and hopefully it’s going down.

There was another thread very similar to this recently - if you have a search, you might find some good advice on that one as well. I had this in my early 20s after a run of recurrent ear infections and it basically needed a different set of antibiotics to get it under control. Hope she's feeling better soon.

Something similar happened to my son when he was 2 ! Huge node in his neck. It became so large they thought it was impeding his airway and were going to intubate him ! Thankfully à senior doctor was called who negated the need for this .
Anyway, he was in hospital on IV antibiotics for about a week . It was ‘just’ an infected lymph node .

My son had this aged 4 (the day before his 4th birthday the poor boy!). He came home from school with a lump the size of a tangerine on his neck, otherwise felt fine. I called the gp, got an emergency appointment and was sent immediately to A&E. He was kept on an intensive care ward for a week, on IV antibiotics! He became very very ill. The doctors said it was probably an earlier tonsillitis infection that had spread (after having been treated with antibiotics) . They said we were very lucky to bring him in when we did, if we had waited overnight it could have turned into sepsis. Crazy stuff. BUT he was successfully treated, and it wasn’t cancer!

Ps it was his lymph node that was swollen, trying to fight off the infection

Thank you everyone for your replies
it is coming down, the redness and swelling has really come down
the lymph node itself has a fraction.

Update : we got told today the test for EBV, glandular fever has come back positive so this points to why
we have another scan in June to see just the lymph nodes are reducing hopefully