To continue on my situation:

It has been eight years since my cancer was operated. The operation was successful.

There is one problem I noted after the operation, however. There was a strange feeling underneath my tongue. It was not so much pain but more like pressure. It felt to me like there was something wrong with the technical result of the operation. In the operated tongue area, next to the lingual frenulum there was another frenulum-like piece of flesh formed in between the tongue and floor of mouth. This "frenulum number two" felt too tight. I could move my tongue very well though.

At the time I mentioned this problem to my surgeon, but he dismissed it by saying that in an operated tongue there are all kinds of feelings and pains here and there, this is normal, an operated area will never sense the same compared to an unoperated area. So I decided to wait and see as I had other things to worry about in my life as well.

It has been years and the pain/pressure feeling underneath my tongue has persisted, however. In the first years it came and went periodically, staying for some days or max weeks at one time. Then it could be absent for weeks. I had a lot going on in my life and other health problems, too, so I had to kind of ignore the pain in my tongue. In 2007 I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and for years when I mentioned the pain the docs put it down to having multiple sclerosis-induced trigeminal neuralgia. And I did, too. I tried carbamazepine (Tegretol) (used for trigeminal pain) but it didn't help at all.

A year ago this pain/pressure feeling under my tongue turned to being pretty much constant. There are no more weeks in between pain episodes like there used to be. I have taken pregabalin (Lyrica) but it too does not do much.

What I have done now is that I have talked with my surgeon and next week he is going to do a bit of reconstruction work on the tongue. The procedure is called V-Y-plasty. THis is to release the frenulum number two a little bit so it allows for more movement for the tongue. At least this is how I understood it. The surgeon has not been very clear about the issue. I asked whether this flap of tissue looking like a frenulum is an adhesion that developed after surgery. He said "sort of something like that" and that was it. I did not push for more information. I have known this surgeon for eight years and he seems always so busy and has the air of "look I'm dealing with big and complicated reconstructive surgeries all the time and this yours is a minor issue so please be gone".

I really hope this operation would solve my pain problem. I have had to resort to strong pain meds for this for a long period of time.

Only some days ago it was the first time that it occurred to me that there is a vague possibility that this could be a recurrence of the old cancer or a second primary. Based on the phenomenon of field cancerization, this possibility is always present, especially as I am/have been a smoker. The feeling of pressure under my jaw, pain in my floor of mouth, recent episodes of dysphagia and dysartria...

But so far I stick to thinking that this pain is a problem that will get better after the reconstructive surgery next week. After all, this pain first started after my partial glossectomy eight years ago as I described. And episodes of dysphagia and dysartia are common neurological manifestations of multiple sclerosis. So I think there is no need to worry.