THORNTON, Colo. (KDVR) — Linda Davis had gum pain that just wouldn’t go away. She went to the dentist for deep cleanings, rounds of antibiotics and a tooth extraction, but she was not getting better.
She and her daughter, Amber Turner, were concerned.
“During this whole thing we just kept saying something is not right. This is not normal, this bump that won’t go away, the extreme pain that she was in, the inability to eat, and it just continued to get worse,” Turner said.
Then Davis was referred to Dr. Michael Burnham, an oral surgeon at Precision Oral Surgery in Thornton.
“We opened it up. Fully expected it just to be some slow healing bone, but the tissue didn’t look right, and whenever it doesn’t look right, we send it out for a biopsy,” Burnham said.
The results were shocking. Davis was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
“I’ve been in private practice for 25 years and this is the first time I’ve diagnosed a lymphoma in the mouth, although we know that they happen,” Burnham said.
Davis couldn’t believe it, but she was glad to finally be getting appropriate care.
“It’s like having a house fall on your head, like boom,” she said. “You don’t feel well, find somebody that can find out why you don’t feel well. I mean from going from a dentist to going to a cancer clinic, that’s a big jump.”
As she goes through chemotherapy, she and her family want to encourage others to advocate for themselves.
“If we hadn’t done that, we would still be at a dentist instead of getting treatment for what is actually wrong with my mom,” Turner said.
Davis has five more rounds of chemotherapy to go. Her family established a GoFundMe to help pay for her medical care.
Kim Posey
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