Hi everyone,

Sorry this is quite convoluted.

I'm a 34-year-old British male who has been living and working in China for almost a decade. About 3 years ago, I noticed a small, white and painless keratinized lesion on the left hand of my tongue towards the rear. I'd convinced myself, based on obsessive Google searches, that it was Oral Frictional Keratosis and for a very long time I ignored it. On a visit home around two years ago, however, I visited a dentist who took one look at it and immediately said that it didn't look at all like cancer but that it should be biopsied just to be on the safe side.

I didn't, of course, take his advice until last week - in large part because, at that stage, I'd started to freak out that it was changing slightly and also because around Christmas I'd noticed another lesion parallel with the one on my tongue, this time on the buccal mucosa. That one is hidden away, however, and could have been there a lot longer.

Anyway, I finally plucked up the courage to visit the dentist here in China. He took a look at both lesions and straight away said he thought it was Oral Lichen Planus - probably a reaction to amalgam fillings that line up pretty much perfectly with the lesions. Like the British dentist, though, he said he'd feel more confident with the diagnosis following a biopsy.

So, I got one done.

A few days later, he called me and said the diagnosis showed squamous epithelial hyperplasia. It wasn't cancer, he said, and there were no signs of malignancy at this stage but I would have to have surgery. He also said he'd never seen a case like mine but assured me that I shouldn't be too worried because "whatever it is, we've got it very, very early." This just served to worry me even more. So, I went to the hospital and picked up the results to see them for myself. Despite going to a international hospital, they were in Chinese, so I had to have them translated.

Basically, the diagnosis says it's Oral Lichen Planus. But I'm not sure about the description because some things may have been lost in translation.

I'm pasting them below in the hope that someone can make sense of them.

Chinese hospitals are notorious for trying to scam their patients and this has been a constant fear of mine throughout all of this. I went to visit the surgeon for a consultation yesterday. He confirmed there was no sign of cancer but, despite the diagnosis in his hand, he said he thought it was leukoplakia and continued to suggest what he called 're-section' surgery to remove the lesions. Again, he didn't even mention OLP until I pointed out that this is what the pathology report said it was. He expressed surprise that I understood the Chinese, at which point he conceded it 'could be' OLP but that leukoplakia and OLP are very hard to distinguish from a biopsy. He said it looks more like leukoplakia. I think it looks like every photo I've seen online of OLP. Anyway, at this point he dropped the surgery angle and suggested a 'wait and see' approach.

The results are here:


I've been going out of my mind about this for over a year. I foolishly buried my head in the sand hoping it would go away - but it hasn't. At this stage, I want to get it sorted out - no matter what.