Hi, I'm a 35-year-old male. I haven't smoked or drank for about 7 years, though I smoked socially for many years before that, and drank regularly for about 7. About four months ago, my dad died unexpectedly from a brain hemorrhage. Shortly after, I developed two strange health problems. First, I developed extremely high blood pressure, despite having never had high blood pressure, and despite neither of my parents having it. A 24-hour test showed that my top number got as high as 207 while sleeping, and the bottom number got as high as 127. I'm medicated now, and it's under control. But no one has been able to figure out why this has happened.

Second, a more relevant to this forum, I developed a small white patch under my tongue -- also something I've never had before. The look of it scared me, so within a week I'd made an appointment to have it looked at. The doctor thought it was probably nothing, but excised it, and sent it for biopsy to rule out dysplasia. It came back "mildly dysplastic, which he said meant that the risk of progression is probably well under 5%.

The doctor said that a company in the beta stage was offering to do free testing of all his patients' samples using a new method to look at protein expression and cytometric markers to try to better predict which people were are risk for malignant transformation. The doctor and his assistant seemed to think it would be quite interesting to get these results. Needless to say, I was expecting to be told that I was "low risk". But the results came back deeming me "intermediate risk", with the estimated likelihood that I will develop malignancy in the next 5 years being 49% (95% confidence interval: 32% - 68%). So, my main question to you all is how seriously I should take this. I have a follow-up appointment with my doctor in 6 months. But, after that, he is planning to leave it to my dentist to follow me, even though my impression is that my dentist doesn't really know anything about this stuff. Is it possible to see an oral cancer specialist at regular intervals with only pre-cancerous lesions? (Also, I'd of course be grateful if anyone has any insight into the possible connections between my blood pressure and my dysplasia. But I'm not expecting that!) Thanks, in advance.