Jennifer’s journey began when she was about 19 years old. She had a ‘suspicious spot’ on her tongue. After a biopsy the doctors determined it was a pre cancerous condition called Leukoplakia. Each year the dentist would biopsy her tongue making sure it remained in a non-cancerous condition. In August 2009 she went to the dentist with a painful lesion on her tongue. Another piece of her tongue was cut out for biopsy. That night she got the devastating news. ‘You have cancer’. At that time Jennifer had no insurance but through God’s grace she was able to find an amazing surgeon willing to operate for basically free. The tumor was cut out of her tongue and we all thought we were done. They continued to whittle away her tongue each year with biopsies until 2017 when the cancer returned. Another surgery, another large portion of her tongue gone. In October 2019, Jennifer was again diagnosed with The big ‘C’. This time she decided to seek the advice of the experts at Emory University’s Winship Cancer Center. After PET scans and biopsies and more blood work and more scans and more poking and prodding, the doctors decided an aggressive approach would be appropriate. On March 3, 2020, Jennifer will undergo a 10-hour surgery to completely reconstruct her tongue. In this ground breaking surgery, the doctors will take skin and tissue from her left arm to replace the tongue tissue they will remove. Jennifer is lucky. They only need to remove about 25% of her tongue. She will go through speech therapy and should be able to speak and eat normally. We will update this page throughout her surgery. We will also be doing a video blog to record her progress. Thank you for visiting!
