One More Picture

I promise this will be the last post about my tongue (other than the biopsy results).

After my surgery I did more exploring online and found some very disturbing pictures of tongue cancers. Oh, man. I regretted looking at them. Even though I do not think my little bump biopsy will come back malignant, the pictures I saw did cause me a bit of anxiety just before bed one night. Looking at them wasn't the smartest thing to do. Ever since, I have been hoping my oral surgeon took plenty of surrounding tissue out with the cyst.

I can't seem to help myself when it comes to sharing...

I took this picture of my quickly healing tongue this morning. Now that the swelling has gone down, you can more clearly see where the incision is/was. (A cross in my tongue -- I like that.) It already looks like a scar and has healed so well. There has been a lot of tenderness the last three days, following just one evening of aching (following the surgery). But I only had enough pain/discomfort the first night to justify taking the pain pills.

This morning my tongue feels very close to normal again.

Yesterday it was still sore. I slightly bit down on it while talking and that hurt! But no damage. All week I have noticed that my speech has been affected. It has been harder to form the words I'm trying to say. Especially any words with an "s" in them. So I've avoided talking as much as possible. But I went to have my hair cut and colored yesterday and I talked to Kim and another client the whole time. I wondered if I sounded funny to them because I sure sounded funny to myself. But today there is a big improvement over yesterday. It's hard to believe the contrast in so few days.

If you ever notice a bump on your tongue, my advice is: don't delay having the oral surgery to remove it. I imagined it to be more painful than it was. I'm not the bravest person when it comes to pain. And since my dentist thought it was nothing, I chose to avoid my fear of the unknown. If it turns out to be benign, no harm done. And I will still be glad I had it removed. If it doesn't come back benign, I will regret ignoring it for a year. One more week until I know which. But either way, I am so glad I had the surgery!

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