Doctors dismissed the canker sore on my tongue then it nearly killed me

From cankerous to cancerous.Rachel Passarella, a young nurse and mother, initially thought the red spot on her tongue was the physical toll of a bad breakup — but the reality proved far more devastating.“I told myself it was probably a canker sore brought on by the heartbreak and tension.

I rinsed with salt water, monitored it, and waited for it to heal.But it didn’t,” Passarella, 42, told Newsweek.Three weeks later, during a routine appointment, her dentist temporarily assuaged Passarella’s mounting fears, noting that, as a healthy woman who neither smoked nor drank, the spot was most likely a canker sore that would clear on its own.“I trusted her.

I even felt silly for worrying.I knew about tongue cancer from my medical background, but I didn’t match the statistics.

I thought I was fine,” she said.Passarella continued to treat the issue with home remedies, including canker sore patches, coconut oil, baking soda rinses and honey, but the spot didn’t go away — in fact, it doubled in size.She saw an ENT specialist, who told her it was likely stress-related and gave her steroids.

Passarella’s request for a biopsy was dismissed it as unnecessary.They didn’t help.The pain continued to intensify to the point that eating became difficult and she lost 15 pounds.Finally, a second dentist she saw was alarmed at the sight of the lesion, scanning it with a handheld oral cancer screening device.

It turned up bad news: The lesion was likely cancerous.She still didn’t manage to get a biopsy for months, but it confrimed her fears.“On March 2…I got the call: squamous cell carcinoma.Tongue cancer.

Six months after that tiny red spot appeared,” she said.After more testing, she had a partial glossectomy, a procedure to remove part of her tongue.She was diagnosed with Stage 2 tongue cancer — and that wasn’t even the worst part.One morning, she woke up choking and began spitting out blood clots.

The blood then started “squirting” from her ...