Jessica Tappenden-Rowell first noticed a lesion under her tongue in May of last year and initially dismissed it as a stress-induced ulcer.
In a startling medical case, a 23-year-old woman from Scarborough, England underwent life-changing surgery after what she believed was a simple mouth ulcer was diagnosed as oral cancer.
But the situation quickly escalated. “It just started getting weirder — there was redness and white bumps around it. I could see it was getting worse,” she told The Daily Mail. “It didn’t even cross my mind that it would be something bad.”
Expecting a routine prescription during her doctor visit, Tappenden-Rowell was instead referred to a hospital. A biopsy confirmed she had squamous cell carcinoma — the most common form of oral cancer, according to the Mayo Clinic.
“It was insane,” she said. “I went from thinking it was nothing to facing one of the worst things imaginable.”
Doctors performed a complex “free flap” surgery, a procedure in which tissue from one part of the body is relocated and reconnected to a new blood supply elsewhere. In her case, surgeons removed her cancerous tongue and reconstructed a new one using skin from her forearm — a patch that happened to be tattooed with the initials “BOA,” referencing the UK’s Bloodstock Open Air heavy metal festival.
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Kemnedy News and Media“They’ve taken my arm and put it in my mouth,” she said, marveling at the medical feat. “It really is amazing.”
Post-surgery, Tappenden-Rowell faced months of rehabilitation, adjusting to a soft-food diet and relearning how to speak. “My speech was really slurred and slow at first because my mouth was swollen and the new tongue muscle was weak,” she explained. “It took me months to sound normal again.”
Now in recovery, she says friends and family have begun to tell her, “You sound so much like you did before.”