Thanks again for all the comments everyone!

The second opinion on the PET images just got filed into my charts and of course I read it and am very down now. It claims spreading to an adjacent lymph node, 4.5 cm in size! That is almost double the size of the primary and put the node into N2a category and the cancer into stage 4a.
So, yeah, 4 different radiologist reports, two on both PET and CT scans by the original imaging facility claiming no lymph spread, and then the two from the JH radiologists, the CT one claims nothing has spread to the nodes and the PET one says what I have just written above. So I am both terrified and annoyed - I am a scientist who does something somewhat similar for living ( I take MRIs of rat brains)and can not understand this huge discrepancy in opinions -a 4.5 cm is not something small exactly for either people to miss or see when it does not exist.

My surgery is scheduled for tomorrow very early in the morning and I am so hoping it goes well enough. I was warned about possible damage to the swallowing muscle so if that happens they will be putting me on the feeding tube immediately.

I don't want to sound like a broken record, but I am so frightened that I don't even know how am I going to finish everything I need to do today.

I will probably not be able to write more till I have somewhat recovered from the surgery.

Thanks again for all the kind words!

36, female, left tonsil HPV+ SCC, T2N1
8/28/13 SCC in left tonsil
9/12/13 surgery:TORS and selective neck dissection (levels II-IV), 23 nodes removed
9/18/13 post surgery biopsy: 2mm clear margins, a 7mm lymph node positive in level IV, no ECL
10/28/13 rad begins, 30 treatments, tomotherapy
12/09/13 radiation ends!
2/10/14 papillary thyroid cancer
2/26/14 PET shows clear neck other than thyroid cancer, but with high uptake in an ovarian cyst
2/27/14 thyroidectomy
3/5/14 pelvic ultrasound