Woman’s Tongue Removed After She Was Diagnosed with Mouth Cancer at 23: ‘It’s Just Bad Luck’

• Jessica Tappenden-Rowell, 23, first dismissed the lesion on her tongue as an ulcer — until tests showed that it was mouth cancer
• She had to undergo a “life-changing surgery” where surgeons removed her tongue and reconstructed it using skin from her tattooed arm
• It took her months to relearn how to talk, she said, explaining that if she had gone to her doctor sooner, she might not have needed so much of her tongue removed

A woman had her tongue removed when a mouth ulcer turned out to be cancer.

Jessica Tappenden-Rowell, 23, first developed a lesion under her tongue last May, but dismissed it as a common mouth ulcer brought on by stress.

But then, “It just started getting weirder, there was redness and there were white bumps around it. I could see that it was getting worse,” Tappenden-Rowell, who hails from the English town of Scarborough, said, according to The Daily Mail. “It didn’t even cross my mind that it would be something bad.”

When she went to her doctor for help, she expected a prescription to make it go away. Instead, she was referred  to a hospital, where a biopsy diagnosed her with squamous cell carcinoma. It’s the most common type of oral cancer,  the Mayo Clinic explains.

“It was insane. I can’t even explain what it felt like going from, ‘Oh yeah, it’s nothing. It’ll be nothing,’ to literally, ‘Okay, this could be one of the worst things ever,’ ” Tappenden-Rowell explained. “Suddenly I had cancer and had to have life-changing surgery.”

Specifically, it was “free flap” surgery, which Mount Sinai explains is when “a piece of tissue … is disconnected from its’ original blood supply, and is moved a significant distance to be reconnected to a new blood supply.”

Doctors removed her cancerous tongue and, using a flap of skin from her forearm, created a new tongue. Her grafted skin had been tattooed with the initials “BOA” — short for Bloodstock Open Air, a heavy metal festival in the UK.

“It’s incredible what they can do,” she said. “It really is amazing. They’ve taken my arm and put it in my mouth.”

Tappenden-Rowell said she had to go on a diet of soft food while she learned how to use her new tongue. “When it came to speaking I was really slurred and really slow because everything in my mouth was so swollen and my tongue muscle was a lot weaker,” she explained, saying it “took me months“ to speak normally again.

“Only recently people have said to me, ‘You sound so much like you did before.’ “

While she’s come a long way, Tappenden-Rowell explains “I still have some days where I struggle a bit. If my mouth is extra tired, if I’ve been talking quite a lot, then I get even more slurry just because my muscles in my tongue are not the same.”

Eating, she explains, is “the biggest challenge because I can’t taste or feel anything on my right hand side” and chocolate gets “stuck to the roof of my mouth.”

She shared that a cause for her cancer hasn’t been determined — largely because she’s “too young.” “My surgeon said, “Even if you had been a severe alcoholic and smoker, at your age this would not have done anything to you yet’ … I’ve not had enough years to have caused that kind of damage yet. It’s just bad luck.”

But most importantly, she says, is that she’s been told she’s cancer free — news that had her surgeon “choking up.” Now Tappenden-Rowell hopes her story will help people seek medical care in her situation.

“If you have an ulcer that has not gone away within two weeks, get it checked,” she said. “The earlier you go, the less chance of this type of surgery. If I had gone earlier, I might not have [needed] such a large portion of my tongue removed.”

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