nicki

Relax and take a deep breath. With the extra information of your last two posts, the surgeon's statements make more sense.
If the cancer has come back and is throughout the tongue both the front and the base, then it's possible it would have spread to the voicebox. Although the surgeon could have been clearer, what I hear is that at this point he does not know just how invasive the cancer is and he won't know until he opens your Dad up and takes a look. This is normal, unfortunately. IMO It's actually a good sign that the surgeon is not asking your Dad to agree right now to have the voice box taken out but instead the surgeon doesn't think this is very probable. But I never heard of "waking up" a patient in the middle of a BOT operation. Hard to believe your Dad would even be capable of meaningful consent.
Also, the standard medical care when a tongue cancer comes back after radiation and chemo is indeed Surgery. It's also true that this surgical option does hold a chance for a "cure". While I did have more than the 35 radiation treatments, it was only after getting the surgery and then getting a bad pathology report from the tumor they took out.
My advice is to relax, WRITE down your questions, then hand them to your Dad to ask the surgeon BEFORE the surgery, and then at the post op check off the answers as to what was done.
My ENT surgeon was very patient with my wife giving her my typed up questions and even writing in answers. Of course some answers were "hard to tell at this point"
There is life after recurrence and salvage surgery
Keep the faith
Charm