You'll want to verify this and friends correct me if I'm wrong, but I think part of the reason they want to remove so many nodes is that the scans are only good for a tumor no smaller than 2cm. Any smaller and they won't show up. It may be that it's better to remove so many suspected nodes while they have you open than to remove confirmed positive nodes and then risk leaving cancerous nodes and have to go in again or worse: have distant metastatis as a result of leaving undetected positive nodes.

I didn't have surgery, but I did have radiation to "fry" the nodes on both sides of my neck. I don't know how that will affect my ability to "filter" cancer cells in the region. I would be interested in the answer to this if anyone has an opinion.

Anyway, best of luck with your surgery.

-Brett