@stonewheel

I'm not too concerned. I have been told that people die WITH this type of cancer but they usually don't die FROM this cancer. That was intended to be reassuring because this cancer is very slow growing. The excessive hormones that are produced cause most of the problems.

I'm more concerned about the surgery that was proposed which would remove parts of my abdominal organs. The cancer cells are very small and are hard to detect even with the most advanced imaging available. A radioactive tracer dye that binds to receptors on the cancer cells showed them where my tumors are. My primary site lit up brightly. I only have a couple of metastatic sites that lit up on the scan. Surgery is a "potential cure" but they need to open me up to look at everything before they know about the possibility of a cure. However, there is an injectable medication that can shrink the tumors and decrease the amount of hormones that are produced. I'm doing the medication and fortunately I don't have to inject myself.

The scans that were done show a lot of details. I get a chuckle when the report says that I have normal adrenals. My labs say at least different hormone levels are abnormally high. I'm only familiar with a couple of hormones other than cortisol. However, there are over 50 hormones in the human body and researchers continue to discover new ones.
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/22464-hormones
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Neuroendocrine cells are found everywhere in the body but only a few of mine are known to be cancerous. My tumors are small and they aren't causing me to have too many symptoms. What symptoms I had in the past were attributed to adrenal insufficiency. Since I was already seeing an endocrinologist I know a little bit about hormones.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/neuroendocrine-tumors/symptoms-causes/syc-20354132
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I'm still processing all of this and it helps to write about it.