My husband is set to have surgery on April 9, with a colorectal surgeon and a liver surgeon. The plan is that the colorectal surgeon will remove the primary tumor and related lymph nodes, and the liver surgeon will get the liver tumor and as many of the distant lymph nodes as he can. They still aren't doing anything with the lungs because they don't know what is or isn't cancer there. The oncologist said that if the lung mets grow or change, he favors radiation for those.
The surgeons were up front and said that they wouldn't be doing this surgery if my husband was older or in poor physical condition, because it is a huge surgery and given how many mets he has, it is probable that the cancer will remain in the lymphatic system even if the surgeon can get all the currently affected lymph nodes. But they said that there has been rare success with this approach and removing all of the mets will make it more likely that they can manage the disease long term.
With all the caveats they gave, I was concerned that the liver surgeon in particular thought this was a long shot and might not be worth the risk, but he reassured me when he said that if he was my husband, or if he had a family member in my husband's shoes, he would not hesitate to do the surgery. So we are hoping and praying that he gets a long term benefit out of the surgery.