Hello from Colorado!

I look forward to reading some of the posts here.

I am not an oral cancer patient, but I have long been plagued with severe and long-standing (25 years) actinic cheilitis on my lower lip, a result of hundreds of hours in the sun as an avid tennis player in my younger years. I have also had twelve skin cancers removed from my face (basal cell carcinomas), including eight Mohs surgeries. Both my nose and one of my eyelids are somewhat disfigured from surgeries performed.

Lower-lip actinic cheilitis is considered precancerous, turning into invasive squamous cell carcinoma perhaps ten percent of the time (statistics vary), a high enough incidence to keep me concerned, anyway.

At the recommendation of my current dermatologist, I recently underwent a laser-CO2 ablation procedure that seems to have rid my lip of the actinic cheilitis. However, I still do experience vague, mild pain in that region of the lip where the severest cheilitis was and i can now feel a very small, hard lump directly below that area as well, which is of concern to me. And I'm not sure i trust the dermatologist to be able to identify a very early SCC. To be blunt, I don't think most of these guys are capable of detecting SCCs of the lip until they become obvious, ulcerated masses and, by that time, I would think such SCCs have probably already started to become invasive.

So at the moment, I'm thinking about visiting an NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center to have them look things over and give me a path to getting a definitive answer as to what the small lump is.

Has anyone here had lip cancer?

I don't remember any lip cancer patients here. You really fit a profile though, life guards, forestry workers, farmers, anyone that has spent a large portion of their life in the sun without lip protection. I have met one person that was a tobacco etiology who held a cigarette in their lips in exactly the same place for years. It is possible that the hard spot is scar tissue related to the previous procedure, and is just fibrotic tissue. Some tongue cancers on the periphery of the mobile tongue begin as an induration that a screener can feel with the fingers during the exam. Always better safe than sorry so having it checked out makes good sense. here is a link to finding the best of the best.

http://health.usnews.com/best-hospitals/rankings/cancer

Thanks, Brian.

Yes, I agree that it could be scar tissue. In fact, I'll be surprised if it isn't, because that area has been subjected to many, many years of physical trauma from the actinic cheilitis, in addition to the numerous cryosurgeries and the laser-CO2 ablation. But I'll be looking for a definitive diagnosis through some kind of testing or even biopsy because I don't completely trust any physician. Two dermatologists (one of the them an established Mohs surgeon) with good reputations misdiagnosed a basal cell carcinoma on my nose a couple of years ago, telling me it was nothing to worry about. Ultimately, it was up to me to seek out a third opinion and by that time (a year later), it had invaded fairly deeply, requiring pretty extensive surgery and reconstruction that took over a year to resolve. I'll never trust any of them again. In the end, I think it's up to all of us to question everything they tell us and to get multiple opinions; even two opinions isn't always enough, IMO.

Thanks for the US News pointer. Being that I live in Colorado, though, the decision's pretty easy. University of Colorado-Denver is apparently the only NCI-designated facility in the state. Fortunately, I live about an hour outside Denver, so that's where I'll be going.