I went for a 3rd opinion at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, MD, and got a totally different recommendation - one that I'm more comfortable with.

He first wants to do another PET scan first before any surgery to make a better determination on whether or not a neck dissection is needed. He felt like I did that a PET scan done 2 weeks after surgery can very likely be showing a false positive. And the FNA I had showed no evidence of cancer. So he wants a little more reason to justify a neck dissection before actually doing it. I need to wait until mid-March for the PET scan.

He said that my tongue is healing nicely (biopsy/surgery was on 1/6) and currently shows no visible evidence of cancer. However, he does recommend surgery, but not sure how much of the tongue he would need to take. He wants to do frozen sections during surgery and may only need to excise a small area or may need to take half as was recommended by the other doctors. So going into surgery I won't know how much of my tongue I'll have when I wake up.

Reconstruction may or may not be needed depending on how much of my tongue needs to be removed. Depending on how much is removed, he may just do a graft or if a lot is removed, then a free flap. Again, I will have a big surprise when I wake up.

So right now I'm on hold until the PET scan, and then a surgery date and plan will be set (sometime before end the of March). The one decision still up in the air is whether or not a neck dissection is need, and if needed, should it be one or both sides.

Pete, you echo my original surgeons opinions exactly as he doesn't feel I'll need the free flap (nor as extensive a surgery as opinion #2).

Thanks to everyone for your input. It seems that the free flap works fine for some, and others have problems. At this point I'm hoping I won't need one. The recovery time is a lot less without it.