Posted on 04/07/2005 1:52:05 PM PDT by Hillary's Lovely Legs
Peter Jennings' lung cancer, which he disclosed Tuesday on ABC World News Tonight, may be in an advanced stage, a local expert on the disease says.
Most patients don't have their conditions diagnosed until the cancer is "so advanced that it can't be cured by surgery, and the patient has a poor chance of long-term survival," says Rita Axelrod of Thomas Jefferson University Hospital's Kimmel Center.
Details of Jennings' condition haven't been disclosed, but his hoarse voice and the fact that he isn't having surgery immediately "suggests he could be in at least stage III" of lung cancer, says Axelrod, director of pulmonary medical oncology.
In stage III, life expectancy for lung-cancer patients is 12 to 18 months, with less than 9 percent living for five years after their diagnosis, according to Axelrod.
Jennings, 66, World News anchor since 1983, shocked his ABC colleagues - and the broadcast world - by revealing in a staff e-mail Tuesday morning that the cancer had been diagnosed the previous day.
He said that he would begin outpatient chemotherapy next week, and that he would anchor when his health permits. Good Morning America's Charlie Gibson and Elizabeth Vargas of 20/20, among others, will fill in.
Jennings had planned to anchor World News Tuesday, but changed his mind late in the day due to a weak voice. Looking thin, he told viewers his news in a taped segment at the end of the broadcast.
Lung cancer is the leading cancer killer in the United States, with roughly four out of five people who have the disease dying within five years, Axelrod says.
The five leading causes: "Smoking, smoking, smoking, smoking and smoking."
Jennings, once described by a colleague as a "relentless smoker," says he quit 20 years ago but started again during the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Nightline's Ted Koppel "was always goading Peter to quit," says Bob Zelnick, chairman of Boston University's journalism department and an ABC correspondent from '77 to '98.
"Sometimes Peter was like a kid, smoking in the bathroom or stealing a cigarette in the hallway," Zelnick says. "At one point, he went to a hypnotist to try to get control of it."
The traditional course of chemo for lung cancer is in cycles of three to four weeks, Axelrod says.
Some people "actually do very well. They're able to work and enjoy life... . They only need to take a few days off at a time."
Meanwhile, the abcnews.com message board has been flooded with good wishes for Jennings, ABC News' Jeffrey Schneider says.
Jennings joined Wednesday in World News' daily 9 a.m. editorial conference call and spoke throughout the day with exec producer Jon Banner, but he didn't anchor last night.
In the wings. Though ABC has no succession plan in place for Jennings, news division chief David Westin has the luxury of a deep bench.
Gibson, 62, and Vargas, 42, already designated subs, would be on any short list. Vargas is considered a fast-tracker at the network.
Other possibilities: chief White House correspondent Terry Moran and World News Saturday anchor Bob Woodruff.
If ABC decides to go with network evening news' first solo woman, GMA's Diane Sawyer, 59, is the logical choice, says CBS Evening News interim anchor Bob Schieffer.
"I have no idea whether she would want to leave GMA, but she's always been the one I would have thought was the strongest woman anchor right now in television, and she works for ABC."
Since Tom Brokaw stepped down Dec. 1, Jennings has brought World News close to the top-rated NBC Nightly News in the Nielsen wars. (CBS Evening News remains a distant third.)
With CBS's Dan Rather having stepped down March 9, ABC is perfectly poised to make a move. Its promo for Jennings says it all: "Trust is earned."
I don't like the guys politics and his bias in his reporting.....a journalist should be objective....but I am praying for him.
Nobody, well perhaps except for Hitler, would have deserved this.
The same went for my mother. She was diagnosed in August of 1983 and died Feb 18 of 1984, at age 43. Feels weird to have lived longer than my mother. It was an ugly death.... smoke if you enjoy it, I guess, but I hope most of you don't enjoy it and live to post for many, healthy years.
I would have lumped in Stalin, Mao, and Fidel Castro (damn why did he have to quit smoking cigars?).
>>The chemo she thought was worse than the disease and with the short amount of time she had, the time could've been better spent.
I hate nausea, to the point that I'd rather not try it unless there is a very good chance of it working. Otherwise, I'd just try to enjoy the time I have left....
An aunt had lung cancer and emphysema due to her heavy smoking.
Look, some don't get sick from smoking.
Some do.
Personally, I wouldn't take the risk.
I'm sorry for your cousin and for your loss, but back in the 80's, I was on chemo for 6 months and never once got sick!
I lost my hair. Which grew back. I am a survivor and yes, I am one of the lucky ones. But you can't equate the same illness with the same treatment toward everyone.
Thanks! But I also put on, and took off, thirty-five pounds. My cholesterol and blood pressure are down too due to exercize.
(Surprised to see that someone above thinks that one FRper trying to help another is a "preaching . . Nazi". Sounds like DU stuff.)
Quack quack...
And I am no health nut. Unless I change my sedentary lifestyle, I won't exactly be helping myself to beat my family's horrible history of heart disease.
But, my diet is already crap (sorry, I won't give up my good food) and I am not an exerciser. Adding drinking and smoking into the mix would do me in pretty early.
All I'm asking is what is it, exactly, that they hope to accomplish? If, like peeing into the wind, they hope to make a mess all over themselves, then it's working. It's certainly not going to help one smoker give it up.
Asbestos exposure often leads to a different type of lung cancer -- mesiothelioma -- than the type Jennings and other smokers get.
Jennings' raspy voice is a very ominous sign, implying that the nerve to his voice box (the recurrent laryngeal nerve) is being impinged by tumor. His gaunt look also implies advanced disease.
Why do you continue to spew this stuff? Who the hell do you know that ever died young from smoking? And if there is, they must have been in pretty poor health to begin with.
Check out your obit's. Everyone who dies are well into their 60's and older, and if they didn't smoke, they sure were around SHS over the years in their lives!
Just who are you trying to impress?
You have to die of something. Might as well be from something you enjoy.
Wishing I could die of sex poisoning. Fat chance, the wife says.
Your sense of "helping another" is extremely warped, my friend. Belittling another rational adult for one of their weaknesses is either misguided, or is borne out of a sense of superiority.
How about a 34-year-old? My father, a heavy smoker, died of a heart attack at age 34, in 1954. Besides lung cancer and emphysema, cigarette smoking can be a major contributing factor in heart disease.
As a pastor, I just had a parishioner--a longtime heavy smoker--die of lung cancer at age 70. He should have expected many more years of life to enjoy with his wife, children, and grandchildren. And his last months were not pretty, let me tell you.
Even Carson at age 79, who was otherwise in good shape--should have expected more "golden years."
And Jennings is only 66.
I don't go so far as to say no one would MISS me, but not being needed is a different thing. Under different circumstances they would jerk my tube and that would be it.
Thanks for the encouragement, though. And I thought you were just a bomb-thrower. Bless you.
You wanna walk over a cliff, go right ahead. You might survive the fall, but, most likely, you won't.
Please note -- I only called you a nazi to be a smart aleck.
We are trying to have a reasonable discussion, just go away. You bring down everything thread with your idiotic ranting.
Go smoke yourself to death, I couldn't care less. You are a miserable stinky shrew who has no pity for anyone who is dying from lung cancer. I would hate to be you and glad you can't be near me in any restuarant because you are too petty of an old witch to go anywhere that won't allow your filthy habit.
You are a pathetic.
Sounds like MY story. My one grandmother died at age 42. Full of cancer. Never smoked.
My other grandmother smoked three packs of unfiltered Camels a day and lived to be 86. Grandfathers smoked and lived into their late 70's. And they died of old age. NOT lung cancer.
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