Your situation sounds similar to my husband's, though slightly more advanced (see my signature below). Once cancer was definitively diagnosed via an excisional biopsy (which also provided clear margins), he switched his care to the Johns Hopkins cancer center, one of the country's top centers, about a hour or so from our home. The local ENT who did the excisional biopsy (since cancer hadn't been diagnosed at that point, my husband didn't seek out a cancer specialist) was talking neck dissection, radiation, etc., and the Hopkins ENT -- who sees this all day, every day -- was able to reassure my husband that in his case, all that wasn't necessary. If he had said that further treatment was needed, I would have trusted that a lot more than a statement from a doc who spends most of his time taking out tonsils and putting tubes in kids' ears.

You're smart to get another opinion from CU. It's a member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, an alliance of leading U.S. cancer centers that together develop the annual updates of the treatment protocols for various types of cancer.

And congratulations on catching this at an early stage!