I can only speak for myself - my lesion was on the underside of my tongue, on the right side, smack dab in the middle-ish, near my molars. I will tell you my own experience - I had two biopsies.

The first biopsy was pre-diagnosis and for the purpose of diagnosing. My oral surgeon injected my tongue, which - I'm not going to lie - hurt like hell. He also had to inject me more than once because I have a high tolerance to pain medication, unfortunately for me.

Once the numbing medicine kicked in, though, I didn't feel a thing. He did the biopsy with a scalpel and basically shaved off a piece of the lesion and then sewed it with traditional type stitches (not dissolving ones).

He prescribed Lortab for me to take once the numbing medicine started wearing off. The worst part afterwards was the stitches - because the lesion was on the underside of my tongue, the stitches could be felt constantly - they felt like I had a spider in my mouth. Not fun. In the days following, my tongue was quite sore, but primarily when I swallowed or said certain words (pretty interesting when you realize how much your tongue moves when you speak). For about 2 - 3 days, I can honestly say that my tongue was VERY sore and swallowing was painful.

Of course, I don't smoke, so the healing process proceeded relatively normally from there. To that effect I will say that everything I've read about oral cancers states that they are FAR more common in smokers. With that in mind, I can only say to you - if you value your life and quality of life, it behooves you to quit. Immediately. That's all I'm going to say about that.

My second biopsy was post-diagnosis in an attempt to qualify me for a clinical trial. Again, I had to be injected right into my tongue and it hurt A LOT but once the numbing medicine took effect, I felt nothing. The second biopsy they did with an instrument that looked like a little stick with a mouth at the end of it - if you've ever seen those plastic alligator heads that kids used to play with - where there was a stick with a trigger at one end and the gator head at the other - well that's what this instrument sort of resembled. My doctor used that to basically yank pieces of my tongue out - fortunately, I didn't feel that. Then when he was done, I think he used sulfur oxide or something like that - it was some chemical at the tip of what looked similar to a Q-tip and used that to chemically cauderize the wound - it basically sealed it up without the need for stitches - thankfully.

The pain afterward was slightly less than the first biopsy, possibly due to the lack of stitches. Hope this helps - I was as honest as possible.