If cancer metastasizes to lymph nodes, if they are superficial, you can feel them yourself, such as supraclavicular, cervical, axillary and inguinal lymph nodes. These metastatic lymph nodes are smaller at first, painless to touch and movable. If left untreated, the lymph nodes will gradually become larger and harder in texture, and several lymph nodes will fuse together, making them immobile and fixed to the touch, and some of them will cause local pain. If the lymph nodes are large, they may cause local compression symptoms, such as mediastinal lymph node metastasis, and when they grow to a particularly large size, they may compress the trachea or esophagus, causing difficulty in breathing or a feeling of obstruction in eating.