Woman woke up from surgery to find tattoo from her left arm now on tongue
A woman's arm tattoo disappeared following an emergency surgery and ended up on the bottom of her tongue.
In May, Harriet Trewhitt was diagnosed with tongue cancer after a painful few months with what she discovered to be an ulcer.
The student from North Yorkshire discovered the ulcer on her tongue in December 2024 and admitted she 'didn't think much about it'. Doctors eventually referred her to the dentist, who then sent her to A&E, with the support worker explaining that doctors told her that they believed seizures caused the trauma, as she bit her tongue during the episodes.
The Brit recalled that following initial treatment, it didn't heal, with a subsequent biopsy revealing that it was squamous cell carcinoma.
Advert
Harriet had to undergo an intense emergency surgery to reconstruct half of her tongue, which took six hours.
"They took skin and blood vessels from my left arm and reconstructed half of my tongue. I didn’t know you could do that until they did," she said. ''They tried to do it with from my leg, but there was too much fatty tissue. I did ask if they could do it on my right arm, but they said they couldn't."
A skin graft from her left forearm, which is where her semi-colon tattoo was located, was done instead.
The 21-year-old got inked just two days after her 18th birthday, with the meaning behind the tattoo strongly linked to mental health, as the semi-colon design represents resilience for people suffering from depression.
"I’ve had severe depression and anxiety since I was 12-years-old or so. A semi colon is used when authors want to end a sentence but carry on," she said of the tattoo.
"The person is the author and the semi colon is their life. It’s a person wanting to end their life but they’ve decided to carry on."
However, after waking up from her surgery, she discovered that the tattoo had been removed from her forearm and was now at the bottom of her tongue instead.
Harriet said that it's 'weird' to have it on her tongue, but it ultimately doesn't bother her. But she noted that her left arm now felt 'really bare,' so she had the ink re-done on her right arm.
She explained: "Initially, the recovery was very difficult. It’s a time that I do deal with a lot of flashbacks. When I went into surgery, I got incubated, which was very scary.
“I was very lucky with the team at the University College in London, they were so caring and kind."
Noting that one of her mates got up at 3am to be at the hospital with her for her first surgery, Harriet recalls being in the hospital for 10 days, though she was 'trying to get out of there as long as possible'.
"With the reconstruction, my salivary glands have been affected more than I thought, but you can learn to live with it." she said.
Harriet has needed months of speech therapy to regain her voice as she prepares for her masters in 2026, though she has been able to take to the stage once more.
She said: "We did a performance of Anything Goes in October, which was incredible. To be able to do it without an issue was incredible."
Joshua Nair