I thought my mouth ulcers were caused by exam stress – but then I was diagnosed with cancer

A medical student had two thirds of her tongue removed and recreated using tissue from her leg after her persistent mouth ulcers turned out to be cancer.

Rachel Morton, who lives in Edinburgh, first noticed ulcers on her tongue in August 2019, around the time of her 18th birthday.

The now-21-year-old claims the sores persisted for a year until one side of her tongue became misshapen due to being completely covered in them.

After ‘struggling’ to get seen by doctors over the course of a year, the medicine student switched her GP practice in November 2020.

Doctors at her new surgery referred for a biopsy, which led to her being diagnosed with tongue cancer on December 18, 2020, at 19 years old.

After undergoing the invasive procedure to reconstruct her tongue, as well as two rounds of chemotherapy and 30 of radiotherapy, Miss Morton was declared cancer-free in June 2021.

Two years after finishing treatment, the budding psychiatrist is now working to raise awareness of tongue cancer’s symptoms and the importance of advocating for your health.

Miss Morton was plagued by ulcers in her first year of university, so she saw a dentist and had various phone consultations with a doctor – both of whom prescribed her antibiotics. She was also prescribed pain relief and remedies such as Bonjela.

She said: ‘I went through the process of going through loads of different [medical] people and not really being seen to and at one point a doctor actually said “There’s actually nothing else that we can do”.’

But by the time her second year of university began, the ulcers had become extremely painful, with her tongue so misshapen that she couldn’t poke it out or drink alcohol.

Despite this, Miss Morton, who is from South Lanarkshire, claims she wasn’t ‘too worried’ as she had been prone to getting ulcers.

She also had red, inflamed lips, was extremely tired and would get a rash around her mouth, which she put down to exam stress.

However, she then started getting ear infections, sinus infections and tonsil aches.

‘Everything on the left side of my face and neck felt off,’ Miss Morton said.

Her GP was probing whether she could have various health problems such as hemochromatosis – an inherited condition where iron levels in the body slowly build up over many years.

But it wasn’t until booking an appointment with a new GP in November 2020 that she was referred for a biopsy.

Miss Morton said: ‘The biopsy was probably one of the worst experiences of the whole thing – it was absolutely horrific.

‘You’re lying there, they numb you obviously, but it’s the sound of the scissors cutting your tongue because it’s such a strong muscle, it really took a lot of force.’

She was told she would hear something in a matter of weeks.

But the hospital sent her an urgent message just days later telling her to come in.

It was then she was dealt the devastating blow that she had tongue cancer – a form of head and neck cancer. 

Although the exact number of tongue cancer sufferers is unclear, around 12,000 people in the UK and 51,000 in the US are diagnosed with head and neck cancer every year.

Symptoms include red or white patches on the tongue, a sore throat and ulcers that won’t go away. Pain when swallowing, numbness in the mouth and pain or a burning feeling in the tongue are also signs. 

Miss Morton said: ‘We went into the surgeon’s room, and he had a box of tissues sitting there. There were all these little cues that made me think “Oh ok, I know what’s going on now”.

‘He’d never actually spoken to someone as young as me with tongue cancer. He said he’s only ever treated those over the age of 60, usually male, that have smoked and drank their entire life.’

Her mother remembered the surgeon breaking out in a rash as he was so uncomfortable at delivering the news.

Exactly one month after diagnosis, on January 18, Miss Morton had surgery.

Miss Morton had ten different surgeries in one 16-hour sitting to break her jaw and remove two-thirds of her tongue and lymph nodes.

Surgeons used some muscle and blood vessels from her leg to reconstruct her tongue as well as the arteries and veins in her neck.

They first tried to take it from her calf but after that wasn’t viable, they used her thigh, so most of her whole left leg had been operated on.

Miss Morton had a tracheostomy – an opening created at the front of the neck so a tube can be inserted into the windpipe – for around four days after.

She also had a feeding tube put into her stomach for around nine months.

On March 1, 2021, she began her first of two rounds of chemotherapy.

Miss Morton then underwent 30 rounds of radiotherapy, which she had five days a week for six weeks, as well as speech therapy for around six months.

She was given the all clear in June 2021.

Remarkably, Miss Morton didn’t take any time off her studies, despite her diagnosis and treatment, and was back attending online lectures just four days later.

The surgery left her with several scars including a ‘Harry Potter-like’ one on her chin.

But Miss Morton feels proud of them, adding: ‘I don’t tend to use make-up as much anymore because I don’t want to cover my scars and [don’t want to] feel like I have to [cover them], because it is what it is.

‘I feel proud of my body for being able to come through this. My scars are a part of me and they will be for the rest of my life, and it shows how resilient, strong and powerful my body is, and I want to reflect that within and do myself justice.’