Painful Knot between Neck and Shoulder

I am 26 years old, very health young woman. No medical history. I have noticed very painful knot on my right side of neck. It's actually located between the end of neck and shoulder and approx 1 cm inwards (to back) from Clavicle. It's painful to touch and diametor is approx 1cm.
It has been 7 days, I have been putting heat pack like my doctor told me to but it's not going away or not getting smaller, not getting bigger.

The problem is that I had right lower side wisdom teeth extraction about a moth ago from very inexperienced dentist. I developed Dry socket and I have been taking medication such as PCN for 7 days, Amoxicillin for 10 days and Mortrin 600mg TID for a month, and I developed skin rash. I noticed my knot when my skin rash was just about to spread to whole body. I still have huge hole at surgical site, still painful to cold water.
My mother , who is a nurse told me that it might be from extraction site that some kind of bacteria went to lymph node and caused painful knot....really? I don't have any fever or tiredness.

Does this anything to do with my extraction surgery? and What should I do next?? Call my doctor to give me an Xray or CAT scan?? I just wanna know what it is and what is causing and it is not malignant or not.

[Dr Vinod]

Hello!

The most common reason is what your mom suggested. Any kind of infection or inflammation may cause the nearby lymph nodes to swell. Here in your case the lymph nodes are tender and painful.

The tooth problem if solved the adjacent lymph nodes also will become normal.

You have to check near a proper dentist to find out if your tooth is infected or what further proper steps you have to take.

Follow up with your physician with proper antibiotics to decrease the present inflammation and take some pain killers and if required go for an X-ray, CT to come to a diagnosis and to confirm it to be a lymph node or not and finally a FNAC of the lymph node.

Take care!