While you are waiting for thursday do set up a second opinion. However I looked it up and you are at a CCC - so assuming he is a top ENT there you should be in good hands. My advice is have someone with you since it's probably quite overwhelming when you go there. They can take note and go over Anything you might have missed. I suspect he is probably giving you minimal information to lighten the blow because from your initial post it seemed that he was playing light with the reality. Some drs will do that to make you less panicked - I wasn't sure since I didn't know where you were being treated. It's not all doom and gloom. Please don't take it that way. This cancer can be scary - what you need to do now is focus on getting rid of it. Ideally for your type of cancer (oral tongue - likely non HPV) things after the biopsy should move like this.

1) scans - either ct- pet - or MRI (or a combination of them) I had two cts - a head and one chest - and an MRI

2) then likely - surgery - ideally they will remove your tumor - and Do a neck dissection (this cancer can seed to the nodes and not be detected on a scan until they are a certain size. ) Often when they just remove a tumor - a month or two later a node will pop up and then another surgery is necessary. Ask your dr about this. If he is experienced he will have seen your type of cancer and know from experience how it moves Normally in your type of scenario. Based on that he can predict the potential for seeding etc. (Hopefully)

3) Based on the pathology from the surgery they will determine whether further treatment is needed. Usually the qualifiers for this are - more than one node involved - extra capsular extension (the cancer has broken out of the node and invaded the surrounding tissue) - peri neural involvement (the tumor is deep enough to hit a nerve) - and I believe they take into consideration the aggressiveness of the cancer. It doesn't have to be all of these things - sometimes only one or two - again - your surgeon will have seen the outcome of your scenario before and know what should be done next.

If it is determined to be HPV related (highly unlikely based on the location - you described) then they often skip surgery - however that is often based on location and invasiveness.

Occasionally even if it is not an HPV related tumor, they will choose not to operate - often this is because it is too large a tumor and removing it would have major impact on quality of life and overall function - as far as I can tell based on your description. - this does not apply to you.

Finally they choose to do a chest ct - because after the nodes that tends to be a top location for spread.

Hopefully some of that helped - ps: ct results are often available with 24 hours - don't wait a week to see him/or her again. You want this dealt with ASAP...
Hugs. And good luck Thursday.