Monica,
I'm sure you will do fantastic. Surgery is never fun, but everyone was shocked at how quick the recovery time was for the surgery itself.
My PET was positive for nodes on both sides, but the pathology came back negative on all of them. As a result I had a bilateral neck dissection (both sides of my neck), which entailed a longer surgery, and they "rebuilt" my tongue with my forearm.
I'm happy to walk you through exactly what happens if you have questions (I had thousands when I first found out).
Given that I am missing just over half of my tongue, my speech is very good. Close friends say I sound a bit stuffed up, but many others who didn't know me as well, don't notice a difference.