As a surgeon who has spent decades treating lung cancers of all types, I wish you the very best. I assume you've had biopsies etc to diagnose what type of tumour it is? And presumably it was the PET scan that showed local and regional spread (lymph nodes etc). So the treating clinicians would have worked up a treatment plan specifically for you, through the MDT (Multi-Disciplinary Team).
That's what we have done for 25 years or more - the whole team, including physicians, surgeons (me), radiation oncologists, chemotherapists, etc etc all discussed each case and worked out a plan.
One plan we used a lot for Stage 3 tumours has been aggressive chemoradiotherapy, with the aim being to "down-stage" the disease. If we succeeded in knocking off any disease outside the primary tumour (i.e all those lymph nodes etc), and perhaps even shrinking the primary, then we'd go ahead and surgically remove all the residual disease, followed by "mop up" low dose chemo for a few weeks.
That approach worked impressively well for many patients, and we have long term (as in decades) survivors who had initially presented with Stage 3 aggressive tumours. Without treatment, those patients would have had survivals of only weeks or months.
Treatment of lung cancers has come a long way in the time I've been working on them. All the very best wishes, and although you'll feel pretty crap at various stages of the treatment, keep the ultimate goal in mind - that first gig once it's all over!!
