Can you have lung cancer without symptoms?

Posted by scared2 @scared2, Mar 15 12:23am

My husband found out he has lung cancer, stage 4. 2nd time. The oncologist says it's not curable. She used the term palliative. He's waiting for a biopsy,found out they wouldn't do the needle or camera. Just doing bloodwork. He has no symptoms. I'm just a mess. He's my life. I'm so scared.i pray everyday that the biopsy doesn't show cancer. Or that bad.
It's darn hard not to cry. I love so much.
Any help would be appreciated
Ty
Scared 2

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Zebra | @californiazebra | 1 day ago

In reply to @lls8000 "@martin77, I'm sorry to hear that you are adding to your lists of cancers. Do your..." + (show)

Hi @martin77
Sorry to hear more cancer has popped up. How frustrating. I had a 2.6 cm lung tumor successfully ablated 4 years ago. I have very slow growing neuroendocrine lung cancer (NETs) and have 50 nodules scattered across both lungs so we can’t remove or ablate them all. The decision was to ablate the largest one most at risk of metastasizing.

The procedure took 1.5-2 hrs with local anesthesia. I had to lie face down on a CT table and not move at all the whole time (hardest part for me). They inserted two probes thru my back into my lung and tumor. Then I went into the CT scanner (low dose) to see where the probes were and then reposition. We did that 20 times until the probes were ideally located. Then the actual ablation thru the probes was maybe 20 minutes? I didn’t feel heat or pain. I had to be awake so I could hold my breath during the scans. I don’t recall any significant pain from the probes, more like pressure (same as biopsy). Lying on the table that long was painful to me but I have neuropathy and neck issues. I needed PT on my neck and shoulder afterwards. Maybe you’ll lie on your back depending on tumor location? That would be so much easier.

My tumor was centrally located and he told me there are not any or many nerve endings there. He said the nerve endings are around the perimeter of the lungs so the experience may vary by tumor location.

I did have a partially collapsed lung afterwards so the first week of recovery was hard but fine after that. Same thing happened with my lung biopsy and they think it’s because I had a chronic cough that maybe didn’t let the lung puncture heal easily.

In 4 years that ablated tumor has not had any re-growth. Over time the body absorbs the dead tissue. It did not have any permanent impact on my breathing in any way. I may have to ablate other tumors in the future as they grow. I would think ablation is much easier than a lobectomy.

You said two spots are thought to be cancer. Are they going to biopsy the spots first so you know exactly what you’re dealing with? Are the spots close to each other or scattered? One lung or both?