Duringa weekend vacation out of state, my husband had an attack of severe abdominal pain in the middle of the night. This was after eating a pretty grissley piece of prime rib. I took him to a local hospital emergency room at 3:30 am. He was in a lot of pain and it took a lot of pain medicine to kill the pain. He is a big guy, but very fit - not obese. They took some x-rays during which he lost the prime rib meal. They also took a contrast ct scan and did a blood work up. The x-ray showed what they thought might be an intestinal blockage. The blood work, however, was normal. Here's the kicker, the ct scan came back indicating a "massive retroperitoneal mass likely due to adenopathy" and likley representing non-hodkins lymphoma!. My husband has had not symptoms what so ever before and is a very active and healthy individual. The mass was stated to be 16 x 12 x 10 cm! That's about the size of a can of pop! Just how accurate are ct scans? Wouldn't he have some kind of symptoms if he had a mass that big? His family does have a history of cancer, but this sounds like misdiagnosis to me. On the ride home after he was able to pass some gas, he felt fine. He has not had a reoccurrance of the pain. I'm devistated. We are going for a second opinion tomorrow, but we cut our weekend short and I feel like i've been kicked in the gut. Do er doctors make these kind of mistakes?