Jennifer,

Sorry to hear the diagnosis, however, this is curable. Just keep on going in the right direction, as you already are.

My lesion was on the side of the tongue, left lateral border is what it is called. I was able to see it and found it very quickly. I had been having pain in my tongue with no signs of anything for awhile before the lesion showed. It was very small and in actuality it was all removed during the biopsy. I know this because there were no cancer cells on any of the frozen sections. I also had clean nodes (30) removed from my neck.

I tried searching the net with Google for you to try to find a good diagram of the tongue. No luck. I've even looked in all my text books, here at the office and there are no pictures that would help you, sorry. The base of the tongue is all the way in the back where it attaches to the floor of the mouth. If you lift up your tongue to the roof of your mouth, you will only be able to see a part of the base. Most of it is too difficult to see.

For further clarification, the top of the tongue is the dorsal surface and the bottom is the ventral surface.

When and if there is matastasis from the tongue it goes to the nodes in the neck, that is why the surgeon will sometimes remove these lymph nodes. The protocol of my surgeon is to always remove them as he feels that this is the only way you can know for sure. Others feel differently.

Good luck on Thursday and let us know what else you find out. Keep asking questions.

Jerry