Just wanted to find out what a cancerous growth should

Hi,
Just wanted to find out what a cancerous growth should feel like under the skin?
In my wife's case, she has developed 3 small, smooth, rubbery hard and painful when prodded or touched, lumps. 2 in the front of her neck, to the right side of her thyroid and the other, on her inner left forearm, half way up the forearm. These lumps move slightly under the skin. As far as she's aware, they are very recent although, it could be because she hadn't noticed them before. She only started looking in the area of the neck because of the pain she had been feeling.
She has no other symptoms. No headaches, no fever, no nausea or diarrhoea, no blotchy skin complexion, no hot flushes, no change in voice, no problems breathing, no thinning hair, nothing. She feels completely normal other than the pain she feels when she checks the lumps. Also, she has a bit of swelling down her neck, also to the right hand side of the thyroid. But that's it. She's checked the rest of her body for any lymph swelling or lumps around the lymph areas and cant seem to find anything. She only has a little tightness around her neck when she lies down on her right side, or on her stomach to sleep. She turns over on her left, or on her back, she's fine.
She also noticed that a cold breeze can make the lumps really painful. Afterwards, they would remain painful for half a day with the pain even affecting her outer ear. This would then subside and then, as described previously.
She has had a thyroid hormone imbalance in the past, just over a year ago. The problem with that was that the doctor suspected that she might have irritated the thyroid as she gets very bad bouts of nausea during the week of her period from time to time, or during strong allergy attacks. She had very bad allergies which she has been treated for now, so allergy reactions these days are significantly less. The doctor did a subsequent blood test shortly after and whilst still being a little off, her thyroid hormone levels showed a trend that they were improving and returning to normal. So we left it at that.
Now, she has these lumps. She did go to the doctor again a couple of days ago (a day or two after she noticed the lumps) and he took a blood sample to send off for tests. She's due back to the doctor's on the 11th of this month for the results.
So in the meantime, as waiting is always the worst part of this process, i thought i would ask you to at least hopefully ease our minds a little, or to know what to expect should these all be bad signs.
Thanks,