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."
You are the most obnoxious smoker I've seen in all my years online. You must be really in denial, and really scared to quit, if you have to keep throwing this stuff at us. If you really believe smoking is harmless, against all evidence and common sense, why be so militant about it? Just smoke, stay out of threads like this, and shut up.
Then again, if ever the sad day comes when you find yourself on the way to chemo, I hope you'll have a loved one to hold your nicotine-stained hand and tell you you'll be missed.
Boy, I tell you. Some of you sure don't read all the postings.
I'm obnoxious? Why? Because I stand up for myself and don't cow tow to the anti's in FRee Republic that CLAIM to be conservative?
I won't be a rug to anyone. Never.
HELLO! I NEVER SAID SMOKING IS HARMLESS AND I WANT YOU TO SHOW ME ONE POST OF MINE IN ALL THESE YEARS WHERE I SAID THAT. COUGH IT UP.
Stay out of the threads? Why? Are you afraid that the lurkers will read another side to this story? You all feel free to come into our FR Smoking Threads and bash US but turn around is not fair play. Is that it?
Chemo? For your sad information, I WAS on 6 months of chemo back in the 80's. And yes. I am a lucky one. I am a survivor. And my cancer was NOT caused by smoking!
Loved one? I lost my loved one of 34 years two years ago. He was a Viet Nam Combat Vet.
Got anything else to hit me with?
It takes terrific will power to quit smoking, and I would have been very dissapointed in myself if I knew that I didn't have the will power to quit.
Quitting is not just good for your physical health, it is good for you mental health as well, because after you quit, you feel as though you can accomplish anything.
I watched my Mom gradually lose the ability to breathe, move, or fight off infection AFTER she quit, She had RA, but the breathing problems certainly didn't help anything.
Again, when I thought about it happening to me it scared me half to death, still does, then made me want something to comfort myself, which usually was something self destructive.
While I wouldn't say THE dumbest, it's certainly high on the list. Even from an early age, I never understood the logic behind taking a bunch of dried leaves, rolling them in paper, setting fire to them, and then breathing in the smoke. Heck, in structure fires, what kills people more than the flames, themselves, is smoke inhalation. So to deliberately inflect smoke inhalation on yourself seems, at best, peculiar.
How many "precious" years will smoking steal from me? Enlighten me,please.
How do you define "quality of life"? Running a marathon,cleaning the house,seeing a good play,reading?
Do you secretly call yourself God? WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?
I think in Jennings' case we can directly link cigarettes to his disease as he was a lifelong smoker.
Dear johnb838,
My mother quit a dozen years before it all caught up to her.
sitetest
believe this MD ???
or is he just a quack??
Well, excuse me. But what part of the world does he LIVE in? And if he has proven all of this, why are his patients still smoking? Sounds like he is losing patients left and right. He will be out of practice soon, sounds like to me.
There are also studies showing that the children of smokers are more likely to be delinquents.
Studies,studies,stidies. Agenda,agenda,agenda.
"Koff,Koff"
But if he keeps losing patients to smoking, he will be out of practice soon. Plus, it's funny that his patients still smoke, since he put forth such a VERY informative research paper.
Hmmmm wonder where he copied it from.
Can you imagine how many runners we HAVE IN HERE?????
Radon gas is #2. Right behind smoking.. You can't smell, see, taste it. Most who live in a house with over 50pci for over 10 years develope cancer. Get your house tested...... Google.... RADON
They think your obnoxious? HAHA they should try sitting next to me in a casino that allows smoking and telling me to put out my cigarette? ha ha they have not seen obnoxious.
Folks, You know what tells me all I need to know about smoking?
If its so "dangerous", if they have a "direct link to cancer" then tell me.. why its not banned yet?
Some will say its about the tax revenues they get from smokers but why not ban it back when all this "evidence" came to light back in the 70's, before they taxes cigarettes though the roof? The govt has no problem banning things that cause cancer, they do it every day.. but for some reason they cant seem to ban cigarettes.
Very telling if you ask me. I tend to think tobacco control is more about people control, and a whole lot less about your health. Is smoking good for you? Probably not.. but I have some serious doubts about just how bad it is for you.
Now.. where did I put my lighter.. :)
Where in any of my posts did you divine that I was a smoker? Perhaps I'm just a proponent of personal liberty.
M y Brother-in-law died at 46 of lung cancer. He would hold a cigarette, and say that if anything got him it would be cigarettes.
And they did.
I was with him in the days and hours up to, and including his death. It was a blessing when he finally lapsed into a coma.
My mother died from emphysema, caused by years and years of smoking. She was 61. She was so addicted that even when she was on oxygen, in the hospital, recovering from respiratory failure, the nurses caught her in the restroom, smoking a cigarette she had bummed from someone.
A few times, I caught her rooting around in the ashtray of the car in the early morning hours, looking for an old cigarette butt to smoke.
In her remaining months, she spent alot of time in the hospital. She had no bladder control due to the excessive coughing. Finally, they had to do a trach on her, and we never heard her beautiful voice and hearty laugh again..the only time she could talk was when she took the tube out of her trach and plugged. The only way she could communicate was by writing to us.
We brought her home from the hospital, and my dad and I took care of her, cleaning her tubes, washing her hair, changing her depends...She had caught a staph infection, and we had to take her back to the hospital. I hadn't realized how serious that was that day, so went off to work. When I came home from work, and went to the hospital, she was lapsing into a coma. She didn't want to die, but by then it was too late.
We all gathered around her bed on Veteran's Day, 1986, and watched as she left us. Her montiors went flat, and my dad, still in disbelief, asked me if I had kicked the plug out of the wall.
She was gone.
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