I just had the same procedure done. Mine was in that front part of the underside of my tongue. They took a skin graft from my upper thigh. The ENT did what’s called a bolster dressing which basically sews that side of your your tongue to your teeth to hold everything in place for the first few days. As bad as that sounds, it wasn’t really that bad. To be honest, I was expecting worse. When they remove my lymph nodes, 14 of them, they found that one was invaded. Because of that I am now scheduled for radiation treatment that starts in a couple of weeks. The area which they took the lymph nodes out is still quite swollen. Especially in the mornings. They took out the lymph nodes as a precautionary because the tumour on my tongue have reached a certain size. Apparently once it reaches 6 mm thick it has a 20 to 30% chance of spreading to the lymph nodes, and mine was and did. I’m getting radiation as a precautionary now so in hindsight The fact that they removed the lymph nodes and found something makes me more sure that I’m doing the right thing with the radiation. Good luck with your procedure. I’m sure it will go well.