Barb
sorry you had to join our little club. Yes, it is pretty cool how they take a wrist flap, replace the part of the tongue they cut out, and graft skin from the thigh back onto the wrist. I had all that done and more yet (see my signature block), I was in the hospital for only 12 days, and cannot imagine three weeks.
I am curious why your doctor is not starting out with radiation and chemo instead of therapy. Take it from me, tongue surgery requires a lot of speech therapy to recover from, plus it make swallowing very hard and in some advanced cases like mine, impossible. They can always do the surgery if the radiation & chemo does not work. What my team of doctors all said at the CCC was that they were very very good at taking me apart to get at the cancer, but not so good at putting me back together again. One more reason to get a second opinion.
Charm