THE DIAGNOSIS.

I've always had trouble with my tongue.  Usually, it runs so much, it causes contretemps with friends, relatives and innocent passersby.  A few weeks ago, however, it apparently rebelled against being required to produce unseemly language and rose up in protest.  It turned flaming red, began to burn, developed blisters on its edges and weird purple highways on its underside.  In a word, it became the tongue from hell.  Eating and drinking became a necessary chore, lacking the slightest measure of pleasure or enjoyment, delivering instead pain and anguish with every bite and swallow.

I stuck the offending organ out at my GP.  He decided it was "geographic tongue", which is not, as I initially inferred, a result of moving to Florida.  He referred me to an ENT (no, dear...it's a kind of doctor, not a Tolkien creature), who peered into my ears and up my nose, then diagnosed me with  "burning tongue syndrome".  "Nothing to worry about, it will go away, there is no cure, pay on your way out."

Because Jess does the cooking, she was becoming increasingly frustrated with my inability to relish her culinary efforts (as a trained chef, rejection of her offerings is painful to the deepest levels of her professional self-esteem) so she took it upon herself to examine my tongue and research her observations online.  In addition to the purple-black lines underneath, she discovered a similarly-colored, slightly raised round area on the top surface.  The experts at WebMD, Wiki, and Google had very little to say about these symptoms except for the one word which is certain to strike terror into the heart of anyone who sees it: cancer!  The Big C! The scariest word in the English language (next to "republican")!  The sparse information included a suggestion to consult an "oral pathologist".  Further research determined that this was a rare specialty indeed and the only ones in driving distance were actually dentists with a tad more training than your garden variety DDS.  I finally found one who took Medicare and turned the details over to Sister Mary Whiteglove, my sibling, chauffeur, appointment secretary and vice president in charge of worrying.

She called, we went, we met with Chirpy Assistant who eventually ushered in Dr. Efficient.  Big guy, interested but not intimate, two-fisted handshake, exuding trustiness.  He examined every inch of the Terrible Tongue and said the purple snakes underneath were...wait for it....varicose veins!  And you thought they only plagued overused legs!  No problem, no cure, but not dangerous.  And now for the purple bump on top.

This could be trouble.  Should be removed and biopsied.  "Who does that?", the patient quavers.  "I do", replies Dr. E.  "When?", she squeaks.  "Now", he responds.  "Scalpel, please, Miss Chirpy."  Well, to be fair, he did deaden the area first.  By injecting a local anesthetic.  With a very long needle.  Three shots.  Can you hear me screaming?  While C.A. kept my tongue pulled out as far as it would go, the doctor excised a pea-sized hunk of the poor thing, then proceeded to sew up the resultant hole.  Talk about fun!

"What kind of pain meds do you have?", he inquired.  I loved that he assumed, correctly, that I was in possession of a rather sizable selection of narcotizing agents.  "Percoset, Percodan, Vicodin...you got something else?" I inquired as well as I could with a cross-stitched numb tongue.  "No.  Any of those will work", he assured me, while suggesting cool, bland, easily-swallowed food for the next week.

Except for six or seven sleepless nights, I was able to keep myself distracted during the endless week of waiting for the double ceremony of Blessed Removal of the Stitches and (gulp) Results of the Biopsy.  That happened yesterday.  The first part hurt.  A lot.  He did dab some lydocaine on the area first, but that didn't kick in until I was back in the car, so the actual stitch removal was a bitch.

But the second part made up for it.  Negative.  You may now exhale.