Ok. I'm glad that you're not scoffing at someone who went through treatment for prostate cancer.
Regarding chemotherapy, um, post #102 points out that Rudy was put on Lupron. That is hormone therapy and perhaps whether it is "chemotherapy" depends on the definition of chemotherapy, but Lupron is a chemical and it was prescribed as part of his therapy....
If the underlying notion in peoples' minds here is that any cancer therapy that is chemotherapy is the "hard/bad" therapy whereas any radiation therapy is the "good/easy" therapy, I reject that. It depends.
Personally, I don't know why he dropped out of the race in 2000, and I'm not sure why it matters (?), and people here could be right that the affair/scandal was the "real reason", but I don't so easily or flippantly discount the possibility that the cancer had something to do with it. I don't know what the effect on him physically was and neither do you. If he "carried on his duties as mayor with full vigor" maybe that was him doing a good job of sucking it up and putting on a strong face while he was still mayor, and then going home in agony off camera. Do you know otherwise? Again, even if one's XRT treatment goes as well as your father's did, the overall experience still is likely to be an extremely stressful thing to go through. For crying out loud the man was diagnosed with cancer and spent nine months in hospitals and/or clinics dealing with it. Doctors poking and prodding, x-rays and CT scans, SEED IMPLANTS INTO HIS PROSTATE (would you like to see photos of this sort of procedure?), then putting on little robes and lying on a table underneath a linear accelerator that produces high-energy radiation every day for 5 weeks. Not knowing whether his cancer was responding or not - not knowing whether his remaining lifespan would now be measured in months.
"But he dropped out of the race and they had to draft Lazio, and radiation therapy isn't even that bad!!!!" just strikes me as a rather petty and spiteful complaint in light of this.