Hey guys, long story ahead. Here’s what I didn’t feel like posting about last week.
I went to have a molar pulled last wednesday because it rubs against my tongue and has caused a lesion called leukoplakia on my tongue. These are rarely cancerous but could eventually turn cancerous. I had a biopsy a few years ago which showed it was benign and the ENT I saw then wanted me to get the tooth pulled or filed down before we removed the lesion. I did not have dental insurance at the time and had no spare money. I had also hoped that I could afford adult braces at some point and just fix the alignment of the tooth instead of losing teeth. But my finances just got worse and more important stuff kept coming up and I just kept putting it off.
It didn’t really bother me except when I bit my tongue. Over the years I bit my tongue more and more and the lesion got a little bigger. In the past year it had more effect on how I ate and even how I talked sometimes. More recently it has become painful almost all the time. Knowing I was risking cancer by continuing to put it off I decided to just go and have the tooth pulled and then get the lesion removed (by a new ENT, the previous one was not very nice). I figured I would not worry about whether I had enough money for the dental bills and just juggle other bills later if I had to. Well, I went to a dentist who agreed that the lesion needed to be reinvestigated and sent me to an oral surgeon for the molar extraction and another tongue biopsy. I didn’t really want the biopsy because I intended to see about getting the entire lesion removed after I healed from the extraction.
I went to the oral surgeon last wed. all prepared for being in pain for a few days. The oral surgeon walks in, looks in my mouth and says that looks like cancer (veruccous(sp) carcinoma) and you need to get it removed. I told them that I intended to but I needed to get the tooth that caused the problem removed first. At first he was going to do the extraction and then take a biopsy of the tongue but apparently they only take the dental insurance offered by my insurance company and not the medical coverage so I would have to pay for the biopsy out of pocket (over $1000). I said no thanks just take out the tooth.
Then they started arguing with me that it wasn’t caused by the tooth and once I have the lesion and that part of the tongue removed I wouldn’t have a problem with that tooth. I told them that I knew the tooth was the problem, the previous ENT agreed. I have watched that tooth shift and turn in over the years, I can feel my tongue catch on it. I knew it was a problem. The nurse had told me that teeth don’t move backwards as you get older they move forward, I said well mine did. She said that if I really insisted she could ask the doctor if he would still pull the tooth, at this point I was pretty pissed at them. This was the same group of oral surgeons (though not the same surgeon) who pulled my wisdom teeth and an abscessed molar and in the process cracked the root of the nearby molar and caused the other molar on the other side to start shifting. Immediately after my wisdom teeth were removed I could feel that tooth hitting before the others when I bit down. It was giving me headaches. They filed it down a little at that time.
So anyway, I left worrying about cancer. I tried to look up some info online (don’t do that by the way, it just scares you more) and could find nothing about veruccous carcinoma but I thought verucca referred to warts (and nasty spoiled girls in Willy Wonka) and my tongue was not warty, it’s just a white plaque. I called a new ENT and set up an appointement for the next week. I tried not to worry about it too much but it’s hard not to think about it when a doctor says something looks like cancer.
Wednesday I saw the ENT. He was a very big guy and much nicer than the ENT I saw years ago. (She had threatened to hit me if I bit her while she had her hands in my mouth - which I hadn’t even done yet.) So the new doctor didn’t try to smush my tongue down with a tongue depressor (which hurts my tongue) and he explained everything well. The first thing he said when he looked in my mouth was “Man! You bite your tongue a lot!”, which I do and I hadn’t mentioned that fact before he looked in my mouth. He then explained that it looks nothing like a verrucous carcinoma which was warty and went on to mention Verucca Salt from Willy Wonka (so I was even more impressed with him).
He said that the lesion did need to be removed and the rest of my throat and oral cavity examined for possible cancer (which could be done at the same time under the general anesthesia). They would cut out a small part of the tongue with the lesion (in case it is cancer they would need to have clear borders all around it) but it wouldn’t effect speech later on. He also said that since I wasn’t a smoker and never had been I was in the very low risk for cancer. My only risk factor being that I am over 40. He also said that white lesions, such as leukoplakias which I have, are much lower risk to become cancerous than the red lesions, (erythroplakia) which I don’t have, something like less than 5%, mostly because they could hide other lesions.
He also went on to saw that my molars on that side, the upper and lower, were very sharp and definitely were part of the problem. He said eventually they needed to be removed or filed down and polished smooth and if my oral surgeons wouldn’t do that he could send me to someone else. Ha! In your face other oral surgeon! It didn’t need to be done before the tongue surgery but it should at least be done soon after I’ve healed.
My surgery isn’t until September 14th. It’s a day surgery in a hospital under general anesthesia and I shouldn’t need to stay overnight unless I have abnormal swelling. I feel be pretty painful and not want to talk for a few days afterwards and be on soft foods for a while. Although I am not absolutely certain it’s not cancer yet, I feel better about it than I did last week thanks to the oral surgeon. So now I can just fret about the surgery for a few weeks.
So that’s what I’ve been up to for the past week or so. I didn’t post sooner because I finally got the new Harry Potter book and I read it in one and a half nights.
