Since a few people have tried to look up what I had done to remove the pre-cancerous growths on my tongue I thought I would put some of the details here where they are safely out of the daily. The details are not pleasant and you may want to just avoid reading anything beyond this paragraph. However, let me emphasize how important it is to catch this stuff early! What I am going through is horrible. Plan B, ignoring what to me was an odd feeling, would have been death. If not death, I could have lost my tongue. Imagine your life with no tongue. If something in your mouth feels odd (especially in the soft tissue areas like your tongue and cheeks) get it checked out and soon!

In early June my tongue felt like I had burned it on the left side about mid way back. I did not give it much thought. It happens. Can you say hot soup? Or cheese? However, a couple of weeks later the feeling had not gone away. I still gave it minimal thought, figuring it was just taking longer than I thought to heal. A couple of more weeks go by and I figure something is up. The problem is the pain was pretty minimal. When I was near a phone and calendar during business hours I would forget about my tongue and thus to make a doctor's appointment. When making an appointment was possible I would be unable to do so. Eventually, mid to late July, I got my act together and saw my GP. He saw the affected area of my tongue and told me I had leukoplakia. A term you never want to here. It is basically a pre-cancerous growth.

Skipping ahead, the first surgeon I saw proposed burning off the affected area with a laser and sending me home. The tongue would essentially have an open wound on it. His description of what my post surgical condition would be like sounded similar to what you might hear from the survivor of a medieval torture facility. Given my experience with a biopsy of my tongue the week before I totally believed him. DW convinced me to get a second opinion. Good thing too. The second surgeon suggested a similar procedure but then putting on a skin patch from my leg. That, he said would speed up the healing time and significantly reduce the amount of time I would be in substantial pain. One detail, the skin graft is permanent. You no longer have tongue tissue on that part of you tongue, you have leg skin. However, he also pointed out the reoccurrence rate for leukoplakia is really high (I would later find out about 30%) and whatever else happened the leg skin had about zero chance of having leukoplakia ever appearing on it. He said that in the past he had used a collagen matrix as a band aid for sorts into which the tongue tissue would regrow. But often the leukoplakia would return. At this point off I went to find out everything I could about my surgical options and outcomes from the medical literature. Even if you do not know statistics, I highly recommend you do so when confronted with life changing situation like this. You do not need to know all of the article's details. Just the bottom line and that is often reasonably easy to figure out.

Eventually, I found a journal article that compared four procedures for leukoplakia and the associated reoccurrence rates. I pulled it up via Google Scholar and everyone has access to that. So you can do this kind of research too. The article is at http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/pho.2016.4256 but it is not very interesting reading if you do not have leukoplakia. Cutting to the chase what they called protocol 3 had a reoccurrence rate of just 2.2% (none of their protocols used a collagen matrix). However, the protocol requires burning off a large area of tissue. Here is their description, "complete excision of the lesions until a minimum tissue depth of 1 mm and 3 mm of surrounding healthy-like tissue were obtained." On your tongue that is a lot. The biopsy I had pulled far less tissue and I was in agonizing pain for days. This time I was starting with a patch that sounded like it was about 15 mm round. I decided to go with protocol 3 and the collagen patch. The surgeon agreed to go with that and it is what was done.

To get the collagen patch to stay put they need to put in a "bolster." Basically it is just some gauze stitched to your tongue and over the patch. After 5 days they cut the stitches and remove the gauze. It hurts like you would not believe. But then it is done, and your tongue can get into the business of coming back. That is where I am now.

There are additional horrible details from the operation, but I think this is way more than most people want to know so I will leave things here. May none of you or your loved ones go through anything like this. But, better this than to ignore medical problems that can easily morph into life threatening or life changing ones. Ironically, the woman who notarized my living will told me her DH died from tongue cancer. He just ignored the symptoms until it was too late. Modern medicine is wonderful. Help it out.

That sounds truly awful!  Hope your recovery goes well.  I ran in the rain today for you!

Thanks for taking time to give us,an update and to educate us. You are such a,strong man. I can not fathom the pain you must going through plus the word cancer cells in rhe midst.

Butterfly hugs to you.

Thanks for sharing your story, Matt. I was wondering exactly what was going on and wish you speedy healing and no recurrence.

I am the poster child for early detection saving lives. In my case there was a cancerous spot the size of a pencil eraser on my lung that was found in a routine physical/chest x-ray

They subsequently removed the entire lobe (you have 3 lobes on one side and 2 on the other)

I have a loss of lung capacity, my previous normally slow 10 min mile pace is now more like 13 mm.

But so what, not the end of my world

If you see or feel anything out of the ordinary do not put your head in the sand. That is not a known cure.

Tammy, I was thinking the same thing. Sometimes life is incredibly random, but there are also risk factors that could predispose one to something. Can't imagine (other than chewing tobacco... Shorty!!) what that would be.

Twocat, thanks for sharing this. I was wondering what you had, but never would've imagined this. Sounds awful, but yes so glad you caught it early! I'm a big proponent of screenings and paying attention to niggly things that are easy to ignore. That being said, I'm also guilty of not remembering to call when near a phone, but think of it when I'm out or see something like that mole on my back...

Best wishes for an uneventful recovery and a fully functioning tongue! Life would truly be a different experience without one, that's for sure.

I do not and never have smoked, chewed tobacco or engaged in the activities typically associated with developing tongue cancer. All you can do is reduce the odds of something bad happening, you cannot get them to zero.

Amen to what hally wrote, "If you see or feel anything out of the ordinary do not put your head in the sand. That is not a known cure."

2C - thanks for the explanation of what you have been/ and-are /going through.

You are very strong, tough, and brave and I am so sincerely sorry for thinking about you what I used to think about you because of your aversion to running in the rain that’s so common out here in the PNW that it's easy for those of us who grew up in rain country to get used to it. After what you have been through, you deserve to run in good weather all the rest of your life, . . . and may my punishment be the worst possible weather hereinafter too, . . . even though it wouldn’t bother me in the least.

.

ps – until I got on MedicareB now covering practically everything, there’s no way I would have made an appointment for singeing a tongue and taste buds that I would probably have rationalized would logically seem to take a long time to recover anyway. In this regard, I’d never heard of  Google Doctor either but have already looked up some things that I’ve been wondering about.  Thanks again Dr. 2C.

tetsujin209 I suspect you are one of the few people in the world I could forgive for thinking ill of me for not running in the rain and worse running in the rain yourself! Oh, I can't look!