After surgery, a girl discovered a tattoo on her left hand, on her tongue (5 photos)

In May, Harriet Trevitt was diagnosed with tongue cancer. For several months, she had been suffering from an ulcer, which she mistook for a simple infection.





The North Yorkshire student noticed an ulcer on her tongue in December 2024. Initially, doctors thought she was biting her tongue during a seizure. Initial treatment failed, and she was then referred for a biopsy. The test revealed squamous cell carcinoma.



Harriet underwent a six-hour surgery to reconstruct half her tongue.

"They took skin and blood vessels from my left arm and reconstructed half my tongue. I didn't know that was possible. The surgeons tried to graft skin from my leg, but there was too much fat there. I asked if they could use skin from my right arm, but they said no," she says.

She underwent a skin graft from her left forearm, which had a semicolon tattoo on it.





A British woman got a tattoo just two days after her eighteenth birthday. This image has a deep meaning related to mental health. The semicolon symbolizes resilience in those struggling with depression.

"I've had depression and anxiety since I was twelve," she shared. "A semicolon is used when the author wants to end a sentence but continues."

"The person is the author, and the semicolon is their life. They wanted to leave, but they chose to stay."



After waking up after the surgery, she noticed that the tattoo had disappeared from her forearm and had moved to the underside of her tongue.

Harriet admitted that the tongue tattoo seemed unusual to her, but it didn't bother her. She also got a semicolon tattooed again on her left hand.

She said: "The recovery was very difficult at first. I was lucky with the team at University College London. They were so caring and kind."

Harriet recalled how one of her friends arrived at the hospital at 3 a.m. to support her during her first surgery. She spent ten days in the hospital.



"After the reconstruction, my salivary glands were damaged more than I thought, but I can learn to live with it."

It took months of speech therapy for the girl to restore her voice as she prepares to take her master's degree exams in 2026.