This is just my observation here. It has always seemed to me that the only way they, the doctors, can accurately stage this stuff is with some form of surgery. I had no palpable nodes, but post-op pathology showed 2 out of 30 +. They did not show up on any scans but I went immediately to stage 3/4 after surgery. I'm not quite sure what you are asking here but I would wait and see what surgery reveals, it will give a definitive answer on the nodes. The thing about surgery is that they get the chance to examine the nodes.

Again, I'm not 100% clear on the question, but I hope that answered some of it. I'm not Brian, but in the old days here you could just toss a question out to the board and get plenty of replies.