I had to have a neck dissection and part of my tongue removed after a ‘harmless’ mouth ulcer – don’t ignore the signs

KAREN Louise Liesching-Schroder was the picture of health.

The 52-year-old never smoked, didn’t drink much and was active, running three times a week.

So when she noticed a stubborn ulcer on the side of her tongue, she didn’t think too much of it.

However, it didn’t heal and soon became an “extremely painful” hole in her tongue – and it was then she decided to get it checked out.

Karen, from Rochford, Essex, then had to wait six weeks for answers.

“It took a lot of chasing up to get a referral to the hospital, which should have gone via my GP,” she tells Sun Health.

In early February 2016, Karen was eventually diagnosed with tongue cancer.

Leading up to her diagnosis, she also visited her dentist, who examined her but never mentioned it could be cancer.

“I finally had a biopsy done at the hospital and when I returned for the results, I was told by a specialist that I had tongue cancer,” she says.

“My world fell apart instantly. I was so frightened hearing that I had tongue cancer, as I thought I was a healthy person.

“I had never smoked and didn’t drink much alcohol and I was a runner.

“There was very little time to digest the news before being taken to meet my clinical team at a different part of the hospital, where I learned about the surgery I would be having and that I may have to learn to talk and eat again afterwards.”

Karen asked what had caused her tongue cancer, but she was told she’d simply been unlucky.

While tobacco, alcohol and human papillomavirus (HPV) can increase your risk, there is often no known underlying trigger.

Weeks after her diagnosis, Karen had surgery on March 3.

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She says: “I had the side of my tongue removed and a neck dissection. I was in hospital for five days.

“After I had healed, it was advised I should have radiotherapy, so I had appointments to have a radiotherapy mask made and a PEG (feeding tube) fitted into my stomach for the purpose of nutrition in case I was unable to eat during treatment.

“The radiotherapy was every day for six weeks.”

Thankfully, it worked and Karen is now cancer free – but she is still suffering long term effects from the treatment.

And not everyone is so lucky.

It was considered an old man’s disease

Karen

Tongue cancer is a type of head and neck cancer. Collectively, this kills 4,143 people every year, according to Cancer Research UK.

Early diagnosis is vital for improving survival rates, so Karen is calling for greater awareness of the disease.

She says: “I knew nothing about mouth cancer when I was diagnosed.

“My dentist never carried out a mouth cancer screening on me during dental appointments and there were never any mouth cancer adverts or posters.

“You see plenty about other cancers but rarely about this type of cancer, which impacts so much of a patient’s life and that of their family’s too.

“All I knew was that it was considered an old man’s disease and that you could get it if you smoked heavily or drank lots of alcohol.

“I was 43 when I was diagnosed, never smoked and only drank a little bit of alcohol socially.

“I had no idea that if an ulcer didn’t heal, it could turn into mouth cancer.”

How common is mouth cancer?

According to Alistair Fry, consultant oral and maxillofacial surgeon at Cromwell Hospital in London, mouth cancer, which is the most common type of head and neck cancer, is on the rise, with around 8,000 people in the UK diagnosed per year.

This has reportedly increased by over 30 per cent in the last 10 years.

He says: “Generally, people haven’t heard much about mouth cancer, which is perhaps one of the reasons why the diagnosis can be missed and is often late.

“Sometimes patients can incorrectly attribute problems in the mouth to dental infections.

“It’s important to get checked if you have a lump, ulcer or patch in the mouth that lasts longer than two weeks.”

Early mouth cancers (stage 1) have around a 90 per cent cure rate, and treatments are usually straightforward with little impact.

Late presentation or more advanced stages falls to just under 50 per cent and is more likely to impact quality of life, including speech, swallow, taste, and appearance.

“Early diagnosis is crucial,” says Fry.