I see my new oral surgeon at Dartmouth for the 1st time on July 14th 2022 for follow up as recommended by the doctor who moved from Boston to have an oral surgeon experienced in working with malignant and possibly premalignant lesions every year or so.

The Boston doctor said to of course call for immediate appointment if anything changes.


Nothing really has changed that I can tell. A ~centimeter long band of different textured tissue remains forward of the biopsy cite, with the scar still having some minor white’ish coloration arround it. It is odd that the oval shaped region of smoother textured tissue (doesn’t match the texture of the rest of ny tongue) shows up very obviously in some lighting and bathroom mirrors and times, and with other lighting it is much harder to see.

The last time I saw the Boston Dr. I am not sure he even noticed what I was trying to show him in the mirror…nothing too concerning he seemed to indicate if it was that difficult to perceive.

It does “blanch” differently under finger pressure too, much more than the surrounding tissue and does some times appear to be indented below the surface of the surrounding tissue.

It does butt right up to the scar from the biopsy.


I plan on asking this new Dr. about perhaps using the toluidine blue dye and other lighting techniques to see if that shows what
I can readily see lights up in those conditions and see he thinks further biopsy is suggested.

For a short while I had two red painful canker sores near the left tip of my tongue that seemed to take forever to heal and also had an indentation like appearance, but right about the two week time limit they thankfully fully healed and disappeared completely.

So really I just expect to probably see this new doctor once a year for follow up and sooner if I ever notice anything change.

Again the Boston Dr said in my case an estimated 10% or less chance that the lesion could develop malignancy, and not a lot of good data on whether removing all residual dysplastic tissue is warranted or if rather the tissue trauma of repeated biopsy/resection may actually induce tissue responses and irritations that may trigger more dysplasia. That is trying to remove all dysplasia may not matter and potentially could cause more harm than benefit, if I recall and understood and interpreted what he had said correctly, and I do think that was the gist of what he said.

The trigger point for last doctor seemed to be any gross (large) changes to the area that you could see with naked eye…then for sure he’d want to revisit further biopsy and surgical intervention.


Best wishes.