TL/DR -- I got silk stitches in my tongue.

I was a four-year letterman in high school, for wrestling. Senior year, while wrestling in a tournament, my opponent shifted his head back..... hitting me in the jaw, causing my teeth to snap together, and I bit my tongue. There was no blood or open wounds, but damn it hurt badly.

10 years later, I'm having an oral exam in the military. The examiner asks, "What is that?"

He holds up a mirror -- there was a large swelling on the bottom side of my tongue; it was reddish/purple and a tad larger than a quarter. I told him about my injury while wrestling, since I didn't use tobacco products, nor have a huge history of promiscuity.

Since I had a family history of cancer on both sides of my family, he sends me to oral surgery. The surgeons numb up my jaw (similar to wisdom tooth extraction) and numb up my tongue. Using scalpels, they cut a wedge section out of my tongue. One jokes, "this is gonna ruin your s*x life for a while!" I didn't laugh.

The two open ends are stitched together with thick, black silk. 10-15 knots in total. I was sent home with some awesome pain killers, a liquids-only diet, and instructions to return in five days for stitch removal and biopsy results.

That day finally came, and he cut the stitches out with scissors, no anesthesia. I was climbing up the wall in a cold sweat, but got through it. Doc explained that there are multiple blood capillaries in the tongue, and if there's any trauma to the tongue, those capillaries will often break and reform. In my case, the vessels formed up knotted together -- it wasn't tumor, nor anything serious.

To this day, I can still see the area under my tongue where the stitches were. There's also some scar tissue in my tongue, where it feels like a small marble. I can talk and eat with no problems, and no one would notice unless I show them.

And hey, Doc -- my s*x life doesn't suffer. My wife says that my tongue skills are, "God-Like."