Two days after turning 18, Harriet Trewhitt got a tattoo on her left forearm.
The design inked into her skin was of a semicolon and was intended to represent the struggle she had been facing with depression since the age of 12.
Flash forward a few years, and Harriet’s original tattoo is no longer in the place she had it done, but can instead be found on her tongue.
The acting student, from North Yorkshire, ended up having her tattoo moved earlier this year when she underwent a skin graft for cancer treatment.
Harriet was diagnosed with tongue cancer in May 2025, after months of dealing with a painful ulcer.
‘I got an ulcer in December 2024 and didn’t think much about it. The doctors sent me to the dentist, who then sent me to A&E,’ the 21-year-old said.
‘The doctors thought it was trauma from my seizures from where I bite my tongue, but when it didn’t heal, they rushed me for a biopsy and discovered it was squamous cell carcinoma.’
Doctors performed surgery to remove the cancer, but this meant she needed to have further emergency surgery to reconstruct half of her tongue.
It took doctors from University College London six hours and was completed using skin and blood vessels from her left arm.
‘I didn’t know you could do that until they did,’ she said. ‘They tried to do it from my leg, but there was too much fatty tissue.’
When Harriet came to, she struggled to speak and had to undergo months of speech therapy to regain her voice, ahead of doing a master’s degree in 2026.
‘Initially, the recovery was very difficult. It’s a time when I was dealing with a lot of flashbacks. When I went into surgery, I got intubated, which was very scary,’ she recalls.
‘I was in hospital for 10 days, but I was very lucky with the team at the university college in London, they were so caring and kind.’
Harriet has also experienced an issue with her salivary glands following the surgery, which she never anticipated.
Salivary glands produce saliva and are crucial for moistening food, digestion (breaking down starches/fats), speech, taste, and oral hygiene.
However, she’s ‘learning to live with it’ and has managed to start acting again.
‘We did a performance of Anything Goes in October. To be able to do it without an issue was incredible.’
She’s also recreated her tattoo since her surgery, as the meaning of it was so important to her.
‘I’ve had severe depression and anxiety since I was 12 years old or so. A semicolon is used when authors want to end a sentence but carry on,’ she explained. ‘[In this case], the person is the author and the semicolon is their life. It’s a person wanting to end their life, but they’ve decided to carry on.’
‘I felt really bare without it, so I had to have it redone.’
So now she has a semi colon inked on her right arm and underneath her tongue, but she claims the latter doesn’t phase her.
‘It’s just a weird thing about me to have it there now, but it doesn’t bother me,’ Harriet adds.
What is squamous cell carcinoma?
According to Cancer Research UK, squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) is the most common type of tongue cancer.
Squamous cells are the flat, skin-like cells that cover the lining of the mouth, nose, larynx, thyroid, and throat. Squamous cell carcinoma is the name for a cancer that starts in these cells.
The main symptoms to look out for are:
- a red or white patch on the tongue that won’t go away
- a sore throat that doesn’t go away
- a sore spot (ulcer) or lump on the tongue that doesn’t go away
- painful or difficulty swallowing
- numbness in the mouth that won’t go away
- pain or a burning feeling over the tongue
- problems moving your tongue or speaking
- a lump in the neck
- unexplained bleeding from the tongue (that’s not caused by biting your tongue or another injury)
- pain or hearing loss in one ear
- weight loss
It’s important to remember that these symptoms might be caused by other, less serious conditions. But it’s best to check symptoms with your GP just to make sure.
The exact causes of most head and neck cancers, including tongue cancer, aren’t known, but several ‘risk factors’ have been identified, including:
- smoking tobacco (cigarettes, cigars and pipes)
- regularly drinking a lot of alcohol
- infection with a virus called human papillomavirus (HPV)
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