Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Docs made me a new tongue.. from my arm
Gran’s life-saving op to beat cancer
A WOMAN who had her tongue removed to fight cancer has a new one – made from her arm.
Gran-of-four Joanna Smith, 58, is a non-smoker but was diagnosed with tongue cancer after she spotted a tiny “ulcer” in her mouth.
She was given eight months to live unless she had it removed, so had 15 hours of surgery.
Surgeons took out her tongue via a hole in her neck and made a new one using skin, muscle and a vein from her left arm.
Joanna, a cleaner, of Clapham, Beds, was able to talk as soon as she woke up and can eat and drink on her own. But she has no taste buds on the new organ and has to eat slowly to avoid biting it.
However, she is cancer free and is expected to make a full recovery.
The mum of two said: “It’s a bit weird. I look at my arm and I can see where my tongue has come from. I think ‘that’s in my mouth now but yet I can talk’ and that’s really weird.
“I can’t stick my tongue out and I can’t say it really feels like a tongue. It feels a bit surreal.”
Joanna noticed a tiny dot on the side of her tongue in October last year and thought it was an ulcer.
She went to her GP when it started to hurt and grew bigger.
Her GP gave her tablets and mouth ulcer gel, but when she didn’t get any better she was then referred to Bedford Hospital for a biopsy.
Medics told her she had cancer and the lump grew to the “size of a Malteser” before the operation on January 10 at Luton and Dunstable Hospital in Bedfordshire.