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Bump Like Blister Under Tongue
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I have something alittle different I've had this little bump almost looks like a blister under my tongue where the vein splits. It doesn't hurt but I have no idea what it is, It gets smaller sometimes but then in the morning its back. Or it could just be in my head. Any ideas of what this could be?
I have no idea. There are all sorts of (small) bumps under my tongue, so maybe it's just normal? Best see a doctor to be sure.
Hi Jason-
I've got the same thing that you have, and have been fighting it for a year now. It is a mucocele, but a much more rare version. I'm fairly certain that its a "Mucocele of the Anterior Lingual Salivary Glands", also referred to as a "Mucocele of the Glands of Blanding and Nuhn".
Not to discourage you, but I've had this thing cut out 2 different times now. Once using just a local anesthetic in the Dr.'s office, the second time (different doctor) was a full surgery in the hospital under general anesthesia (at least I was asleep for this one). It has come back again and I have once again switched doctors. I go in on Monday to have a CT scan done to see if we can get a better picture of the thing so that hopefully when we cut it out again we'll get what we need to to prevent yet another recurrance.
Anyway, I'd recommend going to see your primary care physician. They will most likely refer you to an ENT doc. Below, I have posted the long story of my experience. Its more of a narrative of my experience than anything else.
---LONG STORY BEGINS HERE---
First off, let me say that this has been the worst experience of my life. I had a small mucocele, but mine was on the under side of my tongue, at the tip, and right at the mid-line. I started off by seeing a dentist about it. Diagnosis? Some sort of viral infection, possibly herpes...
HERPES!?!?! Oh god, what did I do to deserve this?
Obviously, I wanted to find out more about it and find out if, in fact, that is what it really was. So on to my primary care physician... Diagnosis? Mucocele. What a relief... you mean they can just cut this thing out! WooT WooT! I was dubious with the dentist's diagnosis, but what a relief that was to find out it wasn't herpes. My primary care physician gave me several business cards for ENT (Ear, Nose, Throat... Otolaryngology is the name of the specialty). So I picked the closest one and went. Diagnosis? Mucocele... confirmed what my primary care physician had thought. He said it probably wouldn't work, but we tried one round of antibiotics, just for the sake of trying. Nothing... So now it was a game of cat and mouse trying to get an appointment when the mucocele was showing itself (Mine, on the under side of my tongue, will rupture frequently, and when it does, its hard to tell that there is a problem. But sure enough 3 - 7 days later, it pops back up, then in another couple of days or so, it will rupture again... it turned in to a viscous cycle.).
So once I was finally able to get in to the office and see him with the symptom showing (after 4 or 5 appointments where it wasnâÃôt showing), he said âÃúthatâÃôs so small that we'll just cut it out" ... like right now... right then and there. Ummmm... ok. It was the end of my day anyway, so sure, lets just do this and get it over with. So I got a nice topical to numb up my tongue a bit, then he took out the needle. Yeah, you know that needle that they use to numb your mouth when you get a cavity filled? Well try taking one of those in the tongue. It burned for just a second and then it went numb. Ok... not so bad. He started messing around and asked me if it hurt... I expressed in slurred, doctor-has-ahold-of-my-tongue, English that I couldn't feel it. Good. Done. 2 sutures, which I could feel them pull a bit. Not a fun experience. Not too bad, but definitely wouldn't want to go through it again.
The tongue is an amazing piece of tissue. It healed over SUPER fast. Like 3 days. 1 suture fell out after 7 hours, the other was only in there for about 36 hours. It looked fine, but I had a bit of numbness at the tip of my tongue that didn't go away when the numbing agent wore off. That upset me a bit. Talked to the doc about it and he said thatâÃôs normal because with the removal of tissue, we're also cutting nerves. So the nerve endings at the very tip of my tongue don't work now. There would be some regeneration, but there may be a small bit of the tip of my tongue that stayed numb. Sure, whatever.... understandable when you think about it... We're cutting nerves. However, I don't feel that I was properly prepared for that as a side effect of the procedure. Again, I was kind of upset about that, but at least the mucocele was gone... Pathology came back on the tissue and it was benign (non-cancerous) and looks like we got it all... or did we? You guessed it. 10 days after surgery, it came back... and with a vengeance. It was now not the small innocent little bubble that it once was, but now was the size of the incision. It looked to me as if the entire cavity that was created with the removal of the tissue had now filled up with the same fluid that the small bubble was filled with. Went back to see the doctor about it and he said it looks more like an infection that anything else, so he used a blade to cut it open and drain the fluids and put me back on antibiotics. Well, once that cut healed, it started filling up again with the same fluid. By this time, it was time to go see another doctor about it. So I called and cancelled all future appointments with that doctor and found another one.
Fast forward a couple of weeks... now at the new doctor's office. Told him my story and completely expressed how upset I have been about this whole thing and he essentially said that we just need to do another excision and remove it again. Last doctor probably just didn't take enough out. The good news? He'd do it in a hospital under general anesthesia. I wouldn't be awake for the surgery! Thank goodness... that last experience had left me really dreading more procedures, so at least I'd be asleep for this next round. Good. Set it up.
1 week later, I was in the hospital ready for surgery. I remember the lady telling me to take one more deep breath off of the gas, then... nothing. The instant I came around, I was 100% conscious and had all of my wits about me. I wasn't fuzzy at all. My mouth felt funny, but I was completely aware of my surroundings and what was going on. I wish I had a book to read or something... It was a very boring hour in the recovery room. I asked the nurse for a mirror so I could look at it and she went and found one... Holy crap! He said he was going to take out a piece about the size of an almond, but good lord that looks like a pretty big wound. Ok, well, hopefully it'll heal well and we can be done with this ordeal.
This wound took much more time to heal because there were no sutures holding it togetherâö it was more like a big area on the under side of my tongue where he had âÃúshaved" off the tissue, so there wasnâÃôt really anything to suture. About 3 days into recovery, I got the sharpest pain IâÃôd ever had in my life. If seriously felt like someone was jabbing a needle through my tongue. Still had pain-killers, but they didnâÃôt work very well for this pain, so went back to doctor and he said he couldnâÃôt see anything, but the pain was most likely coming from an exposed nerve ending.. he gave me prescription for viscous lidocaine, a very potent numbing agent. So for the next 5 or 6 days I constantly had this gauze full of lidocaine in my mouth.
"At least when this heals I wont have to worry about it any more."
2 weeks after surgery it was pretty well healed over and things were looking good. Then one night sitting in front of the computer working, I ran my tongue over my lips and felt it. That dreadfully familiar little firm spot right in the same spot. Sure enough it had come back. Went back to the doctor and he said give it some time. By this point I was getting pretty pissed off. It filled and ruptured 2 or 3 times before I made it back to see him again at which point he acknowledged it had come back.
To sum up that day, I scheduled another surgery with himâö thought about it, then called back and cancelled all future appointments with him as well as the surgery. I just had a bad feeling about the visit and felt that this doctor did NOT address my concerns and treated me like I was an idiot. Meanwhile, he never would give me an affirmation that he knew what I thought it was. IâÃôd also felt this way after leaving previous appointments with this doctor. He just turned out to be an arrogant, egotistical jerk.
At this point, IâÃôm so darn frustrated that I decide to go back to my primary care doc (IâÃôve got a really good primary care physician) to talk to him. I realize heâÃôs just going to refer me to another ENT, but I just need to talk to a doctor that I know will listen to my concerns and frustrations. That appointment went very well. He listened and confirmed and told me that it wasnâÃôt the first time heâÃôd heard that 2nd doctor described as a jerk. Anyway, he gave me 3 options of ENT docs to choose from saying that he has used them all and trusts them. He wanted to know which one I was going to go to because he wanted to personally call them and express how frustrated I was with this and the recurrances.
Just had my 1st appointment with the 3rd doc the other day. She was very, very good. My primary care doc did fax her a bunch of paperwork and did call her on the phone. She was very well prepared for my visit. Personally, she is a MUCH better fit for me. DoesnâÃôt matter how "good" a doctor isâö if you donâÃôt feel comfortable with them, it just doesnâÃôt work. Long story short, IâÃôm going in for a CT scan on Monday to see if we can get a better picture of this thing. Hopefully we'll be able to get some research and expertise on this particular type of mucocele and go back in for surgery and get what we really need to in order to prevent more recurrances. I'm trying to stay optimistic...
I've got the same thing that you have, and have been fighting it for a year now. It is a mucocele, but a much more rare version. I'm fairly certain that its a "Mucocele of the Anterior Lingual Salivary Glands", also referred to as a "Mucocele of the Glands of Blanding and Nuhn".
Not to discourage you, but I've had this thing cut out 2 different times now. Once using just a local anesthetic in the Dr.'s office, the second time (different doctor) was a full surgery in the hospital under general anesthesia (at least I was asleep for this one). It has come back again and I have once again switched doctors. I go in on Monday to have a CT scan done to see if we can get a better picture of the thing so that hopefully when we cut it out again we'll get what we need to to prevent yet another recurrance.
Anyway, I'd recommend going to see your primary care physician. They will most likely refer you to an ENT doc. Below, I have posted the long story of my experience. Its more of a narrative of my experience than anything else.
---LONG STORY BEGINS HERE---
First off, let me say that this has been the worst experience of my life. I had a small mucocele, but mine was on the under side of my tongue, at the tip, and right at the mid-line. I started off by seeing a dentist about it. Diagnosis? Some sort of viral infection, possibly herpes...
HERPES!?!?! Oh god, what did I do to deserve this?
Obviously, I wanted to find out more about it and find out if, in fact, that is what it really was. So on to my primary care physician... Diagnosis? Mucocele. What a relief... you mean they can just cut this thing out! WooT WooT! I was dubious with the dentist's diagnosis, but what a relief that was to find out it wasn't herpes. My primary care physician gave me several business cards for ENT (Ear, Nose, Throat... Otolaryngology is the name of the specialty). So I picked the closest one and went. Diagnosis? Mucocele... confirmed what my primary care physician had thought. He said it probably wouldn't work, but we tried one round of antibiotics, just for the sake of trying. Nothing... So now it was a game of cat and mouse trying to get an appointment when the mucocele was showing itself (Mine, on the under side of my tongue, will rupture frequently, and when it does, its hard to tell that there is a problem. But sure enough 3 - 7 days later, it pops back up, then in another couple of days or so, it will rupture again... it turned in to a viscous cycle.).
So once I was finally able to get in to the office and see him with the symptom showing (after 4 or 5 appointments where it wasnâÃôt showing), he said âÃúthatâÃôs so small that we'll just cut it out" ... like right now... right then and there. Ummmm... ok. It was the end of my day anyway, so sure, lets just do this and get it over with. So I got a nice topical to numb up my tongue a bit, then he took out the needle. Yeah, you know that needle that they use to numb your mouth when you get a cavity filled? Well try taking one of those in the tongue. It burned for just a second and then it went numb. Ok... not so bad. He started messing around and asked me if it hurt... I expressed in slurred, doctor-has-ahold-of-my-tongue, English that I couldn't feel it. Good. Done. 2 sutures, which I could feel them pull a bit. Not a fun experience. Not too bad, but definitely wouldn't want to go through it again.
The tongue is an amazing piece of tissue. It healed over SUPER fast. Like 3 days. 1 suture fell out after 7 hours, the other was only in there for about 36 hours. It looked fine, but I had a bit of numbness at the tip of my tongue that didn't go away when the numbing agent wore off. That upset me a bit. Talked to the doc about it and he said thatâÃôs normal because with the removal of tissue, we're also cutting nerves. So the nerve endings at the very tip of my tongue don't work now. There would be some regeneration, but there may be a small bit of the tip of my tongue that stayed numb. Sure, whatever.... understandable when you think about it... We're cutting nerves. However, I don't feel that I was properly prepared for that as a side effect of the procedure. Again, I was kind of upset about that, but at least the mucocele was gone... Pathology came back on the tissue and it was benign (non-cancerous) and looks like we got it all... or did we? You guessed it. 10 days after surgery, it came back... and with a vengeance. It was now not the small innocent little bubble that it once was, but now was the size of the incision. It looked to me as if the entire cavity that was created with the removal of the tissue had now filled up with the same fluid that the small bubble was filled with. Went back to see the doctor about it and he said it looks more like an infection that anything else, so he used a blade to cut it open and drain the fluids and put me back on antibiotics. Well, once that cut healed, it started filling up again with the same fluid. By this time, it was time to go see another doctor about it. So I called and cancelled all future appointments with that doctor and found another one.
Fast forward a couple of weeks... now at the new doctor's office. Told him my story and completely expressed how upset I have been about this whole thing and he essentially said that we just need to do another excision and remove it again. Last doctor probably just didn't take enough out. The good news? He'd do it in a hospital under general anesthesia. I wouldn't be awake for the surgery! Thank goodness... that last experience had left me really dreading more procedures, so at least I'd be asleep for this next round. Good. Set it up.
1 week later, I was in the hospital ready for surgery. I remember the lady telling me to take one more deep breath off of the gas, then... nothing. The instant I came around, I was 100% conscious and had all of my wits about me. I wasn't fuzzy at all. My mouth felt funny, but I was completely aware of my surroundings and what was going on. I wish I had a book to read or something... It was a very boring hour in the recovery room. I asked the nurse for a mirror so I could look at it and she went and found one... Holy crap! He said he was going to take out a piece about the size of an almond, but good lord that looks like a pretty big wound. Ok, well, hopefully it'll heal well and we can be done with this ordeal.
This wound took much more time to heal because there were no sutures holding it togetherâö it was more like a big area on the under side of my tongue where he had âÃúshaved" off the tissue, so there wasnâÃôt really anything to suture. About 3 days into recovery, I got the sharpest pain IâÃôd ever had in my life. If seriously felt like someone was jabbing a needle through my tongue. Still had pain-killers, but they didnâÃôt work very well for this pain, so went back to doctor and he said he couldnâÃôt see anything, but the pain was most likely coming from an exposed nerve ending.. he gave me prescription for viscous lidocaine, a very potent numbing agent. So for the next 5 or 6 days I constantly had this gauze full of lidocaine in my mouth.
"At least when this heals I wont have to worry about it any more."
2 weeks after surgery it was pretty well healed over and things were looking good. Then one night sitting in front of the computer working, I ran my tongue over my lips and felt it. That dreadfully familiar little firm spot right in the same spot. Sure enough it had come back. Went back to the doctor and he said give it some time. By this point I was getting pretty pissed off. It filled and ruptured 2 or 3 times before I made it back to see him again at which point he acknowledged it had come back.
To sum up that day, I scheduled another surgery with himâö thought about it, then called back and cancelled all future appointments with him as well as the surgery. I just had a bad feeling about the visit and felt that this doctor did NOT address my concerns and treated me like I was an idiot. Meanwhile, he never would give me an affirmation that he knew what I thought it was. IâÃôd also felt this way after leaving previous appointments with this doctor. He just turned out to be an arrogant, egotistical jerk.
At this point, IâÃôm so darn frustrated that I decide to go back to my primary care doc (IâÃôve got a really good primary care physician) to talk to him. I realize heâÃôs just going to refer me to another ENT, but I just need to talk to a doctor that I know will listen to my concerns and frustrations. That appointment went very well. He listened and confirmed and told me that it wasnâÃôt the first time heâÃôd heard that 2nd doctor described as a jerk. Anyway, he gave me 3 options of ENT docs to choose from saying that he has used them all and trusts them. He wanted to know which one I was going to go to because he wanted to personally call them and express how frustrated I was with this and the recurrances.
Just had my 1st appointment with the 3rd doc the other day. She was very, very good. My primary care doc did fax her a bunch of paperwork and did call her on the phone. She was very well prepared for my visit. Personally, she is a MUCH better fit for me. DoesnâÃôt matter how "good" a doctor isâö if you donâÃôt feel comfortable with them, it just doesnâÃôt work. Long story short, IâÃôm going in for a CT scan on Monday to see if we can get a better picture of this thing. Hopefully we'll be able to get some research and expertise on this particular type of mucocele and go back in for surgery and get what we really need to in order to prevent more recurrances. I'm trying to stay optimistic...
Quick followup... here is one of the pages that best leads me to believe that this is a "Mucocele of the Anterior Lingual Salivary Glands", also referred to as a "Mucocele of the Glands of Blanding and Nuhn". Really good information here. The language in it is very "clinical"...
http://www.emedicine.com/derm/topic648.htm
Kadavy- Maybe this link could be posted elsewhere instead of burried in this long post. It sure did help me and might be able to help other folks do some self diagnosis on thier conditions...
http://www.emedicine.com/derm/topic648.htm
Kadavy- Maybe this link could be posted elsewhere instead of burried in this long post. It sure did help me and might be able to help other folks do some self diagnosis on thier conditions...
Thanks alot for posting your (frustrating) story, and that link. I created a new FAQ that holds that link called Do Mucoceles Only Occur in the Lower Lip?.
I have one of these (Mucocele on the midline ventral surface of the tongue involving the glands of Blandin and Nuhn) and it actually only shows up for a day or 2 at a time. It never lasts more than a week. It's been happening to me for as long as I can remember. I actually wouldn't care about it at all if it didn't sometimes get caught between my 2 bottom teeth. Before you consider getting it removed I would just wait and see if it goes away on its own. Sometimes mine goes away for 6 months.
Sorry for reopening this thread again, but I've had the same lump -- a small translucent lump under my tongue that shows up each morning, along with a dry throat -- for the last 6 months.
Thank you so much for putting all of this information online and linking to several other places, naming types of doctors to see, etc. I really appreciate it.
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