Hi Michelle,
don't freak out yet. Oral melanoma is fairly rare. I misdiagnosed myself from internet photos. I found a photo of peritonsillar abcess that looked exactly like my stage III/IV tumor. It really takes a biopsy and ENT or head & surgeon to determine what it is. Just try to go about life as best you can and remember our saying - "it isn't cancer until the path report says it is".

If it were me though I would go straight to the ENT, not an oral surgeon. Many of us here had late or misdiagnosis and this is a disease that you really want to catch in the early stages. We have lots of comprehensive cancer centers in California so I would strongly recommend going to one of them as well. UCSF, Stanford, UCDavis, City of Hope, Loma Linda come to mind. You can find links to the NCI and NCCN on the OCF resources page: http://www.oralcancerfoundation.org/resources/index.htm

My mother had BC, and a radical mastectomy along with a rather nasty melanoma on her arm. She also had uterine cancer -won the battle with all three. She died of a massive heart attack. My dad had a bad heart and died from cancer - go figure. What keeps me sane today is to stay in the "now" and leave the future to God.

Kudos to your dentist for alerting you to finding something suspicious. My dentist and hygenist are always flagging areas of concern now - mainly just garden variety radiation damage of no consequence. Too bad they didn't get suspicious earlier in the process when I was in an earlier stage.