@hopeful33250 Hi Teresa,

You are correct that they did not suggest surgery for me. The reason is because I have so many tumors scattered all over both lungs that there is no way to remove all of them and no point in removing lobes. And the symptoms come from the little ones lining my airways that can't be removed either. My interventional radiologist just told me he had never done microwave ablation on a lung tumor as large as mine before so he's so excited that it was successful. It has been two years and that tumor is just scar tissue inside now.

It's the DIPNECH that causes me to have so many tumors. It's rare with only about 200 documented cases. That's why it confused at least 20 doctors (radiologists, pulmonologists, oncologists, etc) for a dozen years. Hardly any doctor has heard of it. They first thought it was mets, but where was the primary cancer? Most thought it must be some bizarre benign condition or leftover from a virus, but they were slowly growing. They could tell it wasn't primary lung cancer. They wanted to biopsy, but would have to filet my chest and lung to get to the largest one. I declined figuring it was too late if mets and overkill if benign. In 2020, the largest tumor was large enough to biopsy with a needle so I agreed. Since I now had breast cancer for the second time and they wanted to see if it was related. It is not in any way related to my breast cancer.

I do know someone who had one very large typical carcinoid in her lung, had that lobe removed 10 years ago, no other treatment and has never had another issue. She wasn't left with any breathing issues either. So without DIPNECH, lung NETs (typical carcinoid) is less complicated.