Sorry to hear about Mike's recurrence. Mine came back almost as quickly as his did, but it's now been 20 months since that surgery and no third time so there hope that this surgery will get it. My understanding was that it's pretty standard to split open the jaw to take out a tumor at the base of the tongue. They saw thru right at the midpoint of the chin and then open the jaw up and out. IMO the actual procedure will be harder on you since you will be awake and worried and Mike will be unconscious. Plus afterwards Mike will be getting drugs and you won't.
I thought the jaw surgery was "easier" than radiation and chemo in terms of recovery but that's because the surgeon was able to just close my jaw back up with a titanium plate and screws. Some OCF posters have had to have portions of the jaw removed or even their whole jaw which is a whole different story. I was in the hospital for 10 days after the surgery but it was a combination of splitting the jaw, a neck dissection, grafting a flap to fill in the base of my tongue from my wrist, grafting skin from my thigh to replace the wrist flap and a traech tube put in. It took my ENT and a plastic surgeon 8 hours playing "tag team" to do it.
But the surgery did get the recurrence so it was worth it.
Charm