27-year-old with rare disease who lost part of her tongue – She repaired it with part of her leg

A young woman with an appeal to sports and a healthy lifestyle suddenly found herself in surgerywhere she stayed for about 9.5 hours so doctors could remove part of her language of, because of a rare diseasewhich they then reconstructed with muscle taken from the foot her.

THE 27-year-old Charlotte Webster-Salter she was working as a flight attendant and due to her demanding schedule, she was tired all the time and sometimes he had large red ulcers in his mouth of, according to nypost.com. “I wasn’t worried at first. I was jet lagged all the time because of my job so I assumed it was from that“, he characteristically said.

Signs they receded and recurred at regular intervalsso she visited doctors, who urged her to fix her teeth, since they thought he was suffering from some kind of inflammation. So, removed all wisdom teeth, bracesbut beyond a “perfect smile”, the ulcers did not disappear.

Then, she went to a dentist who performed a biopsy and discovered that the young woman did not actually have a problem with her teeth, but cancer in her tongue and needed immediate surgery.

“I went in for the results and he asked me: “Do you have anyone with you today?“. I looked at him and said: “It’s not good, is it?”. He replied: “No, it’s not. I’m so sorry. You have tongue cancer“, said the 27-year-old about how she learned of the diagnosis.

9.5 hour surgery

So, he immediately operated with them doctors to try for 9.5 hours to remove the tumor, causing them to cut off part of her tongue. Simultaneously, they rebuilt itusing one muscle from the leg of the girl.

Nevertheless, that’s when her Golgotha ​​began, since she may have removed the tumor – which fortunately did not metastasize, but she had to fight for the recovery, which was difficult.

Initially, the they put him through a tracheotomy so he could breathesince she was swollen in the mouth, while he had to learn from scratch, to talk, eat and breathe.

“I remember the first time they tried to take it out (ie the tracheotomy tube). They covered the hole so I could then breathe through my mouth and I just couldn’t. I think my body wasn’t ready… It was like having a mouth full of straw or hay. It was so hard, so crusty, so stuck. And I remember the panic, I was like, ‘no, I can’t'”, he said characteristically.

After some time, however, he managed to fully recover and now urges people to go to the doctor for check-ups and not neglect anything, just because they are still healthy. “I didn’t smoke or drink, but I did go to the gym and eat right. But I developed tongue cancer,” said Charlotte Webster-Salter.