Last week I went to the dentist to have my teeth cleaned… regular routine stuff, nothing to worry about.
The hygienist is looking my moth over when she says "lift up your tongue for me" then she leans in with a probing tool. "can you feel that?" she asks. "Nope, are you even touching me?" I reply. "I need the dentist to look at this" as she left the room. Im thinking "great here we go, something amazing is about to happen". The dentist, who was obviously working on someone else and was stopped to come look at me pulls up a chair and says "lets see whats going on here, lift up your tongue for me… OH!.. can you feel this?" I gave him the same response, "are you even touching me? whats going on?". "yeah, we need you to get that removed right away". "whats going on, remove what from under my tongue?" I asked. The dentist went on to say that I have a think white patch developing on the underside of my tongue, and that its not always a bad sign, but commonly it is a symptom of TONGUE CANCER!"
TONGUE CANCER! WHAT THE HELL!
The dentist asked me how much I smoke of chew tobacco on a daily basis. I told him that Ive never smoked or chewed in my life. Hell, Ive been straight edge for over 10 years now.
Yesterday I went to the Oral surgeon for him to check it out. He was a nice guy, but his reaction was the same "how much do you smoke/chew?". Simply amazing. When I told him that I dont touch the stuff, he asked me if I have a family history of cancer. If you count my mom, 3 of my grandparents, my great grandpa, my aunt, my uncle, and myself all having cancer, tumors or something biopsied, then yeah I guess there is a bit of history (In 2000, I had my right breast removed at 19, because the drs thought I had breast cancer, im glad it was just a benign tumor).
So yeah, the doctor wants to do a biopsy on the "Leukoplakia" I have under my tongue right away. By right away he means today. He said that Im going to need a few stitches to close it up. Stitches un my tongue� suck. It doesnt make me feel good when I go to a doctor about something that could be cancer growing under my tongue, and he wants to remove it and analysis it 24 hours later.