Philip Brooks gains first hane experiance of a health scare but lives to tell the tale

I recently found myself, albeit transiently, at the other end of the stethoscope. I didn't enjoy the experience one little bit. I think I had what the Daily Mail call a "health scare." Believe me, "scare" was the word for it.

I was half way through a junior surgical rotation and was sitting in the (grotty) theatre staff room waiting for my consultant. I was flicking through a 1995 copy of Bella, I kid you not, no copies of the BMJ or the Lancet, just trashy mags designed to appeal to the kind of people who follow "reader's tips" or send in amusing pictures of their upturned tortoises in a bid to win the novelty pet competition.

Anyway, my hand came to rest momentarily on my neck and sure enough, there it was: Brooks' node. It was huge, the biggest, beefiest, meanest lymph node this side of the equator. I went very cold very quickly and put my hand back to my neck. It hadn't gone. My ward partner, Emma, plonked herself down next to me and started to babble on about some senior house officer she fancied, and how her very low cut scrub top almost revealed her ample bosom to all and sundry. I would have usually offered some witty retort and settled down to pass the time by having a good gossip, but my "mass" had rather quelled my conversational ability. Emma asked if I was OK as I had gone a bit pale. I replied in the negative and pointed out my new found cervical lymphadenopathy. She laughed, adjusted her top one more time and said, with somewhat malicious overtones: "Oh, don't worry, it's only a big malignant tumour; now come on we'll be late!"

Usually, I would have joined in with her (sick) joke, pulled on my cap and legged it to the right theatre before being on the wrong end of a telling-off. For some reason, I just couldn't move. I felt my legs go all to jelly as little beads of sweat took it in turns to race down my mid-axillary lines.

I got home that evening and mentioned my "malignancy" to my housemate. His attitude was more favourable than Emma's, and he convinced me that I was just being an oversensitised medic. Despite his Welsh words of wisdom I had a sleepless night. I kept pitching and turning in bed until my duvet was just one big knot. I kept rolling my fingers over my node and trying to stop my brain from going into overdrive. When sleep finally took me at 5 00 am, my differential diagnosis was a lymphoma or leukaemia.

Enlarged lymph nodes - a happy ending this time...

The whole of the next day reminded me of cancer. It was on the ward round, in the newspaper, and on the television and in every textbook the page would miraculously fall open at "high grade this" or "radically invasive that." I started to think of all the awful tests, fine needle aspirates, and bone marrow biopsies I would have to endure. I imagined the treatment and Machiavellian procedures I would be subjected to. Would my chemo go through a Hickman's catheter or a regular intravenous line? I pictured myself at the centre of conversations held in theatre staff-rooms by obese surgeons in Jockey pants. I had overheard such conversations and, on more enlightened days, participated in them. Truly, I could have wept. I then realised that every patient in the hospital could be feeling as awful as I did right now. Every "interesting case" or "rare tumour" was attached to a real person. Every patient with "unusual pathology" ceased to be so remote, but became, in my mind far too close for comfort.

I mentioned my node and provisional diagnoses to my friend Alison. You could always rely on Alison to give you an objective overview of any situation.

"Don't be so daft," she said.

She also highlighted my recent cold and pointed out that my node was probably a consequence of some minor throat infection or reactive hyperplasia. I felt a moderate relief; a benign differential diagnosis was just what the doctor had ordered. Needless to say, my lymph node disappeared. This did not, however, stop me from looking up cervical lymphadenopathy in my textbooks and furtively examining my conjunctiva for signs of anaemia. The lack of node was a phenomenal comfort. It was almost as if nothing else mattered. Brooks' node is certainly symptomatic of "getting your priorities right" syndrome.

A few weeks later, a friend of mine was telling me about her pending dissertation. She had to submit 10 000 words plus three case histories.

"This one girl, only 22, with a huge space occupying lesion, really interesting though ... poor cow ... anyway, Phil ... hello, Phil ... are you still there ..."

I hadn't hung up, I was just too busy examining my neck to answer.