Hello everyone. Well, I am a new member to this site and to this board. I hope that hearing from others who have gone through similar situations will make me understand better what is happening.

Thursday of last week I noticed that a white patch/sore on my tongue that I had had since August of 2013 was getting worse. I had it looked at by a doctor who then referred me to an ENT back in September and he gave me Prednisone and some type of antibiotic mouthwash to use. Two weeks later I had a follow up and it had mostly healed except for a small white patch that had remained. He told me to get it removed but I figured it was nothing and went on my way. When it began hurting again I finally did some research online, scared myself, and made an emergency next day appointment and had it biopsied. While waiting for my results, I read an infinite amount of posts on both this board and in other locations on the Internet mostly trying to find out how long a biopsied tongue hurts for. I didn't see anyone else complain about it too much, but it was not fun. Anyway, I finally got my biopsy results back today and turns out that I do have Stage 1 squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue.

I am 25 years old, can count the amount of times I have ever smoked on one hand and only drink socially. I am 90% positive that I am HPV16 negative but they sent it off today for additional testing. Anyway, I am scared. I had a CT scan done today too (which as I was sitting here typing luckily came back clear) and I have a doctors appointment tomorrow morning for a second opinion. They said that they have to do another surgery to check the tissue surrounding the cells to make sure they are clear. I know that many here have faced much worse and I am truly sorry for what you are going through. My heart goes out to you all. I am so scared though. I don't do well with surgeries and I am prone to anxiety and I just want to tell someone who will understand.

If you made it this far in reading my introduction, I thank you.