British mum thought she had just bitten her tongue before finding out life-changing diagnosis
A woman’s life was saved after her nagging husband tipped her off to something that she needed to get checked right away.
Lynn Hunt, from the UK, Initially thought she had just ‘bitten’ her tongue when two little white spots appeared on the side, but she would shortly find out that it was a life-threatening illness instead, thanks to her husband raising the alarm.
The mother, who posted a TikTok video of her journey, shows viewers the reality of spotting the killer disease.
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Hunt showed a range of pictures of before and after her surgery, showing the progression of a tumour.
According to her, the quick thinking of her husband led to her diagnosis of right lateral tongue squamous cell carcinoma.
She said in the caption: “Photos of the start of where I thought I had bitten my tongue to find out it was right lateral tingue squamous cell carcinoma and after surgery to remove and replace with radial forearm free flap & neck dissection and radiotherapy side effect ulcers."
Hunt’s journey with tongue cancer all began when she thought she’d bitten it a couple of times, having woken up to a sore and discoloured patch.
She began: “I thought I would come on and show you some pictures of where this all started so this is a picture that I took when I woke up one morning on March 14.
“I thought I bit in my tongue- in fact, it was a couple of days before this I thought I bit my tongue and I thought I'll it go away- and then a couple of days later, I thought ‘that's not going well, I must have bitten it again’.”
She said: “I was sat, I think in bed, you can see I got my dressing going on. I thought, ‘oh, I’ll just take a picture on my phone and have a look at it that way’.”
The image showed two little dots of white on the side of her tongue.
Then, the next image she showed was what looked like an ulcer in the same place, which she realised was cancer.
Hunt explained: “On April 18 it went from those two little white dots -which got bigger- and then it went into an ulcer.”
She mentioned the ulcer to her husband, who urged her to go to the doctor, and when she questioned him, he repeated that she needed to call them in the morning.
So, she went to the doctor’s office to raise the alarm and received a biopsy just weeks later.
On May 9, she took an image three days after the biopsy, showing her tongue with stitches sticking out.
This confirmed that she indeed had tongue cancer. On May 24, she had surgery to remove a section of her tongue and replace it with a portion of her forearm.
Thankfully, she managed to heal well, as she commented on the scar ‘fading’ as she showed viewers the difference between her forearm section and the rest of her tongue.
Britt Jones