McCain vows to return to work soon
Colleagues wish senator well after surgery
WASHINGTON• Battling brain cancer, Sen. John McCain on Thursday promised to return to work, levelling fresh criticism at the Trump administration and aiming a good- natured dig at Republican and Democratic colleagues jolted by news of the lawmaker’s diagnosis.
“I greatly appreciate the outpouring of support — unfortunately for my sparring partners in Congress, I’ ll be back soon, so stand-by!” McCain said in a tweet.
The 80- year- old McCain, the Republican presidential nominee in 2008, was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive type of brain cancer, according to doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, who removed a blood clot above his left eye last Friday.
The senator and his family are considering further treatment, including chemotherapy and radiation, as he recuperates at his home in Arizona.
Showing no signs of stepping back from political and national security battles, McCain issued a blistering statement through his office criticizing the Trump administration over reports it was ending a program to assist Syrian opposition forces fighting the government of Bashar Assad.
More significantly, McCain’s absence is forcing majority leader Mitch McConnell to delay action on health- care legislation. Republicans need his vote to move forward on repealing and replacing president Barack Obama’s law.
Meantime, prayers and words of encouragement multiplied Thursday from presidents and Senate colleagues past and present.
“I called Senator John McCain this morning to wish him well and encourage him in his fight. Instead, he encouraged me,” said former president George W. Bush, who prevailed over McCain for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000. “I was impressed by his spirit and determination.”
The American Brain Tumor Association says more than 12,000 a year are diagnosed with glioblastoma, the same type of tumour that struck McCain’s Democratic colleague, the late Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts. The American Cancer Society puts the five-year survival rate for patients over 55 at about four per cent.
McCain, a former combat pilot, has a lifetime of neardeath experiences — surviving a July 1967 fire and explosion on the USS Forrestal that killed 134 sailors, flying into power lines in Spain, being shot down in October 1967 and falling into Truc Bach Lake in Hanoi, and going through 5 1/2 years in a North Vietnamese prison.
In the past, McCain had been treated for melanoma, but this primary tumour is unrelated. Doctors said McCain is recovering from surgery “amazingly well” and his underlying health is excellent.