Lesion in front of old biopsy (right lateral lower tongue)site that I noticed but the oral surgeons couldn’t really see, now mildly painful. I contacted my oral surgeons office to schedule follow up visit due to the new sore feeling.

One of the staff members asked that I see my dentist before I get seen in 4 months. I guess I shouldn’t have said “rub?” in the text, was running out of characters to say felt like a rub sore, but I can’t make the sore find a rough tooth edge no matter how I try, so I don’t think it has anything to do with a sharp tooth edge.

Have definitely had canker sores that line up with a tooth point as a kid, tongue always seemed to find the ouch spot as a kid.
This isn’t like that at all.

The texture of this oval region that has a lighter pigmentation (again I can still barely see if under just the right lighting conditions, and find it really hard to capture on iPhone photos) has a definite rubbery texture—as I run my finger across it, it doesn’t slide smoothly like it does over the rest of my tongue, but kind of grabs and jumps, like a rubber squeegee effect.

This oval is slightly raised from surrounding tongue tissue, mostly can just feel it being ever so slightly raised with finger.

Sensitive now to touch, very mild pain. Does on occassion hurt by itself; sometimes a burning sensation, sometimes like a mild canker sore pain.

Has flared up a few times over past few months. Was doing the couple week healing time watching it first couple times
but finally decided I better mention it to Dr.


For those who have had multiple biopsies of white lesions leukoplakia or what have you, how often did they have a pain and still come back benign or moderate or mild displasia?


My original moderate displasia was utterly painless, complete surprise when the dentist even found it.


Even though I am now with a oral surgeon at a teaching hospital; I was wondering about the biopsy tissue being sent back to the same pathologist lab for comparison.

The oral surgeon who did the first biopsy, and was a oral/jaw cancer survivor himself, insisted the biopsy go to this one renown pathology center with a very highly regarded top of her field oral pathologist who did in fact do the analysis of the first biopsy.

Part of me wants her to see the new biopsy (assuming this is headed that way, as it has been dormant for so long and this being a new symptom), and going back to the first oral surgeon I ever saw.

But the new teaching hospital system my new Dr is in has their own pathology lab. I think Dartmouth does have CCC status; just just not as focused on oral SCC.

Any advice in that? I guess a board certified pathologist and pathology lab should be generally competent regardless; just not my personal preference ideal scenario.


I also wonder about being more insistent about the surgeon taking the whole oval lesion that I can see but they have been somewhat dismissive of or say they can’t really see anything there.


I cant really mark it with a Sharpie marker…but I feel something is going on here in that oval, and it isn’t just me being over-hyper-vigilant.

I previously wondered about the toluidine blue dye aiding in pre-biopsy visualization guide of biopsy margins, but the last couple of doctors indicated they don’t give that technique much credence any more.

I’d say if that oval stained blue and lit odd under blacklight/UV the doctor would see exaclty the spot I have been seeing.

I don’t know if it would show up. Maybe it interferes with the poathology stains too, that may be the bigger reason.

I just want to be aggressively proactive and vigilant to intervene early if that tissue decided to get more severely dysplastic or creep into a carcinoma in-situ state.

Not eager to biopsy the tongue again, but seemingly that’s gonna be the wisest route; that’s my prediction.

I’ll update if anything changes and once I’ve seen surgeon again.

If it gets different yet again I’ll ask to be seen sooner.

I’ll endeavor to be a good patient and schedule a dentist visit to rule out sharp tooth rub irritation situation ; nothing has changed to trigger that, so can’t see how that is possible; but will humor the oral surgery staff…

Best wishes to those fighting the good fight with worse news and diagnosis.

R/
CQ