Giving voice to tongue cancer

Yahoo

27-04-2025

SIOUX FALLS, SD (KELO) — A Garretson man is offering some health advice to everyone: always listen to your dentist, even in matters that don't involve your teeth.
He's successfully completed treatment for a type of cancer, that was first discovered during a routine dental appointment.
Mike Dishman was an avid four-wheeler, whose love of the outdoors was sidetracked last fall during a visit to the dentist.
'She discovered them, discovered a couple of lumps, told me I needed to be checked out,' Dishman said.
So Dishman got those lumps in his neck checked out at Sanford Health. It turns out, he had a cancerous tumor growing in the back of his tongue that had spread to some lymph nodes. Surgery was not an option.
'Had 35 radiation treatments and seven chemo treatments over seven weeks,' Dishman said.
Those treatments took their toll on Dishman.
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'They do wear you down pretty hard. So about two-weeks after my last treatment, it was pretty rough kind of coming out of that,' Dishman said.
Dishman says his cancer didn't show any symptoms, which his doctor says is not uncommon.
'People often notice a painless lump. That's the common thing they notice. A lot of us just kind of dismiss that oh, it could be an infection, could be something else,' Sanford Health oncologist Dr. Steven Powell said.
Dishman's type of cancer has long been connected to tobacco use. But that's changing.
'Now we're seeing it happen in people that haven't done any of that largely because of the uptick in human papillomavirus exposure,' Powell said.
Dr. Powell says vaccination is the best way to prevent HPV. Meanwhile, Dishman says he's feeling great right now, but his voice is still coming around.
'People tell me I sound okay, but to me, I still sound different in my head,' Dishman said.
Dishman is even planning a trip to the Black Hills next month, taking the back-roads to recovery.
Dishman has reached another benchmark in his recovery by returning to work full-time at Sanford Health's Human Resources department.
Dishman credits his dentist with Falls Dental in Sioux Falls for being, in his words, 'tenacious' about making sure that he followed up on his medical treatments.
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