Justin....I will answer here, if only to perhaps help you get through the weekend. Of course, nobody can diagnose from a picture, and you know that. There are not many people on this wonderful forum who have had SCC on the palate, and I am one of them.

I realize that cancer can take all forms, and that there are other conditions in the mouth....even other cancers...that are not SCC and will present differently.

The palate is a bone, covered in a thin tissue layer, and that layer is composed of the same cells that cover many of our body cavities...squamous cells.

The bone underneath could certainly have been injured or insulted and produced some over-growth in reaction. The dark spot to me appears to be probably something vascular under the skin. Of course, I am not diagnosing.....I would not even comment if i didn' tknow that you already have an appointment, and if I didn't know that nothing I say will keep you from going.

I wanted to describe the appearance of my palatal cancer, and it looked nothing at all like your area of concern. Mine began at the gingival surface of my right maxilla, on the cheek side. I did not look early, but my dentist did and was not suspicious of the red, tender area. 6 months later, I complained of tenderness again, and he cauterized the area. I did not look then either.

Two months later, I felt an area on my palate, which, of course, is on the inside of the mouth....the lingual side of the maxilla. I did look then, and what I saw was frightening. It did not look horrible.....It was red, and a little raised, but still flat, with some small white and/or yellow spots. It had spread along the toothline on the cheek side, and had crossed onto the lingual side and spread in the other direction, and onto the hard palate, where it formed a roundish, flat-but-slightly-raised, reddened slightly spotted area. It did not look the same every day, but it never got better.

Your area of concern is, obviously, nothing like this. Squamous Cell Carcinoma is a cancer of the cells that line our cavities and organs....Your area of concern seems to come from below the skin of the palate.

That does not mean that it is not important...ANYthing that is not normal needs to be checked. And it does not mean that it isn't something other than SCC that might be equally important....and it doesn't mean that I know anything at all and that it could still be SCC.

But you asked about our experiences, and your spot doesn't look at like my spot.

Of course, you are going to go to the dentist on Tuesday. My advice: Ask him to have you return in a few weeks so that he can analyze whether or not it has changed. And make a plan with him for what you two will do if it has not improved. You have not noticed it before, and you don't want to forget about it again (fat chance, eh??)

But if I had had a return visit the first time I complained of my gum tenderness, I would have saved myself 8 months of allowing this SCC to grow in my mouth, and it might not have spread to my palate at all.

Keep us posted. Get into "neutral" over the weekend. Stay busy, and don't obsess about it. Three more days is not going to make a difference in the outcome.