A 26-year-old barman, Dan Durant, didn't think that an ulcer in his tongue was something to worry about. Treating it with pain relieving gel was enough for him. It all changed after he accidentally bit his tongue, which led him to go to the hospital. Doctors ended up diagnosing him with mouth cancer.
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Durant first noticed the aforementioned ulcer back in August 2023. "It was a grey, whitish patch, the size of a one pence coin," he said, according to Mail Online. However, he thought that it was normal and only treated it with Bonjella, a pain-relieving gel that helps fight infections and reduce inflammations. "I didn't think of it after that. Mostly it just felt like it wasn't there," Durant added.
However, things finally changed when Durant, of all things, just bit his tongue. "I sneezed really hard and ended up biting my tongue. It went really inflamed," he said. It was so inflamed that he visited Royal Stoke University Hospital after his doctor referred him, fearing the worst.
Well, the doctor's suspicions were correct. Just one week later after his visit, on August 21, 2024, a year after noticing the ulcer in his mouth, doctors diagnosed Durant with squamous cell carcinoma. This type of cancer affects the skin inside the mouth.
Durant was understandably shaken and upset after his diagnosis. "I didn't quite believe it could be cancer," he said. "Being told it was upsetting. I did have a cry. It was so surreal." He even recalls hearing the nurse saying "You were lucky you bit your tongue."
A Surgery Later
Weeks later, on September 12, 2024, Durant underwent surgery to remove the tumor in his mouth. The surgery took 11 and a half hours to complete. Doctors even found a second tumor in his mouth and a cancerous lymph node in his neck. They ended up removing 50% of his tongue and used skin from his body to reconstruct it.
"They took skin from my forearm for my tongue and then the skin from my stomach to replace the skin on my arm," Durant said. "They also used the arteries from my forearm and put them into my tongue so there was a blood flow."
Currently, Durant is learning how to eat and drink again and is on a soft diet. "Learning to swallow properly was quite difficult. I'm just getting used to chewing," he said. "My jaw aches a lot. It's a lot of relearning things." He has also set up a GoFundMe campaign to cover his recovery and to donate to cancer research.
Durant is waiting for the biopsy results of the cancerous lymph node doctors found in his neck while performing surgery on him.
