Common mouth problem was the ONLY warning sign of cancer – I had to have my tongue removed

A young woman has warned the public never to dismiss a stubborn mouth ulcer, after a sore turned out to be deadly cancer that led to the removal of a section of her tongue. 

Jessica Tappenden-Rowell, 23, from Scarborough, North Yorkshire, dismissed the lesion that appeared under her tongue in May last year as a sign she was ‘run down’ and ‘too busy with work’.

But within several months, the sore had become so painful it would often bring her to tears while yawning and eating.

‘It just started getting weirder, there was redness and there were white bumps around it. I could see that it was getting worse,’ said the carer. 

Although she added: ‘It didn’t even cross my mind that it would be something bad.’ 

She visited her GP to ask for any treatments that may provide a remedy, but was referred to York Hospital.

Doctors there carried out a biopsy on the ‘ulcer’ and, in August, Ms Tappenden-Rowell was given the devastating news that she had squamous cell carcinoma — a type of mouth cancer that starts in skin cells.

‘That was like a smack in the face,’ she said. 

‘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”.

‘Suddenly I had cancer and had to have life-changing surgery. It was wild.’

Squamous cell carcinoma makes up around 90 per cent of mouth cancers, but it can also be found anywhere on the skin — making it the second most common skin cancer in the UK. 

Around 99 per cent of those diagnosed with the cancer at early stages will survive for at least five years. 

However, if spotted at much later stages, when it has spread to other, nearby areas, survival rate drops to as low as 50 per cent, according to some studies.

Common signs of the disease include an ulcer that doesn’t go away within two weeks, a red or white patch inside the mouth, lumps on the mouth or lip and changes to the voice or swallowing ability.

Doctors immediately arranged an operation to remove the tumour from Ms Tappenden-Rowell’s mouth. 

Known as free flap surgery, it involved removing the cancerous part of her tongue and replacing it with a section of her forearm.

The doctors took a six-inch by two-inch section of skin from her arm along with a vein and an artery, and plugged this into tongue to provide blood flow.

After the surgery, she woke up in intensive care to find she’d temporarily been fitted with a breathing tube, and was resigned to a diet of soft foods for two months while she got used to her new tongue.

Almost a year on, she can eat a wider variety of foods but still struggles with certain staples like chocolate, which gets ‘stuck to the roof of my mouth’.

Ms Tappenden-Rowell said: ‘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.

‘You have to get used to your tongue and using it to speak, it took me months.

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

‘I’m not there yet, 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. 

‘It’s very strange but eating has been the biggest challenge because I can’t taste or feel anything on my right hand side.’

 Thankfully, scans have since shown that she is cancer-free — the surgery was a success.

‘It was amazing when I heard I was cancer free, my surgeon was choking up on the phone,’ she said.

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

Ms Tappenden-Rowell said her lifestyle habits, like vaping, smoking and drinking alcohol, were not likely to have caused her cancer. 

‘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,”‘ she said.

‘That would not have been the cause. He said I am too young, I’ve not had enough years to have caused that kind of damage yet. It’s just bad luck.’

The young woman is now speaking about her ordeal to encourage people to get unusual lesions in the mouth checked out.

‘If you have an ulcer that has not gone away within two weeks, get it checked,’ she urged.

‘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.’