Posted on 08/20/2004 7:15:37 PM PDT by GRANGER
John Kerry's upbeat prognosis: The Massachusetts senator and Democratic presidential candidate says he'll beat the cancer that killed his father. And he'll be campaigning again soon.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - By Jake Tapper
Feb. 12, 2003 |
For many Americans, the first glimpse at Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry -- perhaps the frontrunner for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination -- came on Tuesday evening when he announced that he had prostate cancer.
Wednesday morning, the senator announced, he would be undergoing surgery at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore to remove his prostate, the walnut-sized gland that is crucial to the male reproductive system. Doctors say he has a 95 percent likelihood of being cured.
"They're going to take my 'aloof' gland out tomorrow, so I'm feeling better," Kerry joked to the throng of reporters who had assembled at the Senate Radio-TV Gallery, referring to one of the main criticisms political scribes and opponents have thrown his way. It's been a weird few weeks for Kerry; on Feb. 2, the Boston Globe reported that his paternal grandfather, apparently unbeknownst to the candidate, had been a Hungarian Jew who changed his name from Fritz Kohn to Frederick A. Kerry.
Of more consequence, perhaps, is Kerry's father, who died from prostate cancer in 2000. Second only to lung cancer as a cause of cancer-related death among men, prostate cancer kills about 40,000 American males a year; those with a family history of prostate cancer are at greater risk.
At Tuesday's press conference, Kerry, 59, voiced complete confidence in both his surgeon, Dr. Patrick Walsh M.D., urologist-in-chief at the James Buchanan Brady Urological Institute at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and his prognosis.
Odd how he doesn't bring this up as something he took on the way he took on The Enemy in 'nam.
The silence on any prognosis is deafening. I thought that he would loudly release any positive information on a follow up. The fact that he hasn't leads only to the conclusion that he hasn't gotten good news. I don't wish him ill will, medically at least, but I would believe that it is a legitimate question that the MSM will never ask.
America needs to know if it will be Kerry or Edwards.
A guy I went to college with married a woman who worked at a hospital where Paul Tsongas was treated for his Cancer. They knew he did not have much time left but no one leaked it.
He refuses to release his medical records.
We have a right to know.
True but radical surgery was indicated. Why no word on metastasis?
I absolutely agree. I'd bet that 99% of FReepers, certainly including the undersigned, wish Senator Kerry a long and healthy life (preferably far from significant political power). But tell us. Did they, in fact, "get it all"? Are there, or are there likely to be, any side effects from the surgery? Uncomfortable questions, to be sure, but voters should know the prognosis.
And while he's at it, Senator Kerry might consider releasing his Viet Nam medical records (I understand he served there) in order to clear up any misunderstandings as to the origin and the severity of the wounds which earned him his three Purple Hearts.
13 months after his cancer surgery, Kerry took a six day vacation (http://talkleft.com/new_archives/005714.html)
but nobody connected the dots.
Most forms are not agressive, but some definitely are and his father died of the disease. Without the opening of his records and periodic reports on his condition, we have no way of knowing if he has actually been cancer free and remains cancer free.
How can you out run cancer....when you are a form of cancer. Except your form of cancer is in you very soul. It is ugly and it will eventually kill you.....
> "They're going to take my 'aloof' gland out tomorrow
Right.
What else did they miss?
Anyway, if Kerry gets Toricelli'd at the 11th hour, the
official line is apt to be "medical deferment", rather
than "concedes he's scociopathic prevaricator".
I'm beginning to understand Teresa's grouchiness now.
You will note that he constantly wets his lips and exercises his tongue.
Even if he beat prostate cancer, doesn't just the fact that one had cancer once, more likely to get cancer again?
This is too much like Clinton redux, Kennedy redux, Roosevelt redux-they all kept America in the dark about their health.
ICK!
Send him to France. Let him torture them with that wretched oratorical style.
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