I have to agree with anne o - I too had a lesion on my tongue - my CT showed no spread to my lymph nodes. There were 6 weeks between my diagnosis and my surgery as I was diagnosed before Christmas - over the Christmas holiday I ended up with one swollen lymph node- I could palpate it. After new years I had an MRI - my lymph node did not highlight. My surgery was booked. My dr. Who is top in his field here in Canada - told me he wanted to do a hemiglossectomy and neck dissection. I was good with this as I know this cancer can be aggressive and know that it could easily have spread. The day of my surgery I took the dr.s finger placed it on the swollen lymph node. he asked if it was new - told him I had felt it from before new years, and it didn't highlight on the MRI depite it's size- it was 1.5 cm. They removed a portion of my tongue rebuilt it and removed 40 lymph nodes - one of which did have cancer cells.
The surgery is big, no lie, but for me it was well worth it. I am two days away from fishing my radiation and chemo.
I was out of the hospital and eating fairly normally within 10 days. My neck is stiff but has loosened up considerablly - I'm not swollen - though radiation has made the healing harder.
My concern with a needle biopsy is that they may miss small cells that could be cancerous. I know nodes can swell for a variety of reasons, infection, inflammation, etc... But not knowing for sure would freak me out. I know it seems crazy to jump into a big operation like that if you didn't need it, but I would rather put up with the recovery than go through a surgery, wait a few months and find out it was in my nodes and have to go for another surgery. Then possible chemo and radiation. But then I had a small node highlight on my other side just at the start of radiation and told them to include the right side with the left for my radiation so - maybe I am into overkill.

I know it's a hard decision - but this is an insidious and aggressive disease Do what you can to elimintate it - first time out. There are no guarantees we could possibly do everything and still have it recur. But at lease you have no what if it hads?...

Good luck tomorrow