Nodules in the Lung

My main question has anyone here had a resection of the lung and what was the surgery and recovery like?

 

My backstory is that i had an 11-12 CM stage 3C tumor remover in October 2016. I had one year of NED CT scans and life returned to normal.

Januarys scan revealed to very small nodules in the left lower lobe. 4mm and 6mm. When they reviewed the 6MM on the previous scan they saw a pinpoint near a blood vessel and the location of the 4mm was clean in the previous scan.

Of course i wanted to attack it right away with drugs or whataver and not let it spread. My very good local oncologist said they are too small to biopsy and they dont recommend drugs until a growth pattern gives strong proof its cancer for sure.

I use the expert research doctors at IUPUI whom i think are some of the best in the world for consults and i went to see them Thursday 2/22. They put a good spin on all this. They said with the size, stage and length of time my tumor had been growing and the way they had to "squeeze" it away from the heart during surgery it was likely that millions of cancer cells had gone through my body. The fact that it took 15 months for two (if its cancer) to settle in my lung is a testimant to how my immune system is killing cancer cells. He explained that cancer cells are much more fragile than people know and so many people have them in their system its just that our immune systsm kills most of them.

All that being said they also explained that almost all the drugs even immunotheraphy drugs compromise our immune system to some degree. Because mine is doing so well he doesnt want to compromise it and prefer surgery as a first options ofr someone who is strong and healthy with no evidence of a spread to other areas of the body. The only porblem is they have to wait and see if / when they grow large enough for me to have surgery. I then asked how we keep them from spreading during the "waiting" and was told its extremely rare for them to slough off cells or spread during this young small newly formed stage.

so its looks like we wait and if they grow as i expect they will then ill have a lung resection. Maybe VATS will be an option but i dont know. Im sure someone else here has been through it and im curious what the surgery and recovery is like compared to the radical nephrectomy? Even though its a smaller surgery ive heard the lung can be very sore and tendor and potentially more painfull or with a longer recovery? I dont know.