It has been 15 months since my previous glossectomy. SCC Left lateral tongue T2N0M0, took about 1/4 of tongue that time, as well as neck dissection. I am treated by an ENT oncology surgeon at a CCC.
My Doctor has been very cautious, and I have been seeing him every two months since my original diagnosis and surgery. I had a CT scan done in January that was negative for any problems. 2 weeks later I noticed a small white patch and began to watch it to see if it would go away. It didn't, and seemed to be getting larger.
I was able to be seen within the week. Biopsy was done that day that came back moderate dysplasia. After discussion I decided to go ahead and have another partial glossectomy. I am 5 days post op and feeling more pain than I expected. It appears that a stiich may have popped along the incision line...it kind of gapes there and is making it difficult to eat/drink much. Call to Dr and am being seen on Friday. Has anyone else had their stitches come undone?

I wonder how much of the tongue can be taken before it affects your speech?
I can handle the surgeries, but hope to continue to avoid chemo & radiation.
Thanks for listening to me ramble.

I’m not sure that there is an exact answer to your question. There are so many variables. Where the tongue anatomy is removed from plays a big part. You might be able to lose pieces on the borders without much impact, but if you lost the front third and could not touch it to your pallet, making certain sounds that depend on that would be difficult. Base of tongue, where it begins to curve down your throat would be really problematic because through there pass all the nerves that give it mobility and all the blood flow which could cause the loss of the whole thing. So there likely isn’t an absolute answer to your question.

Loss of mobility through nerve loss would also compromise eating as you would not be able to manipulate food in your mouth nor easily move it from front back to your throat to swallow. These really are all academic questions. If something becomes malignant you would ultimately have to do radiation rather than lose any of what I just mentioned. Hopefully it will never come to that. Ensuring you always have a multidisciplinary consultation before it gets there will be important.

hi Trixie, I’m new to this forum, but, I can tell you from personal experience, if your entire tongue is removed you can regain some speech. It’s not perfect, you have to go slow and refer to your inner thesaurus to pick words that don’t rely heavily on hard consonant sounds: G’s , C’s, K’s and so on.

I had total glossectomy last July and I can carry on fairly decent conversations, sometimes it’s like playing charades.

Keep your sense of humor intact and a note pad or dry erase board handy!

My surgeon has recommended a palatal drop prosthetic, soon as I get healed from surgery on Monday I will be heading in that direction.