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Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Oh, shit....part II.
Posted by Jill | 11:22 AM
Now it's Tony Snow:

Presidential spokesman Tony Snow's surgery to remove a small growth showed that his cancer has returned, the White House said Tuesday.

Snow, 51, had his entire colon removed in 2005 and underwent six months of chemotherapy after being diagnosed with colon cancer. A small growth was discovered last year in his lower right pelvic area, and after months of monitoring, tests now show that it has grown slightly. It was removed Monday.

Doctors determined that it was cancerous, and found during the surgery, which was exploratory, that his cancer had metastasized, or spread, to his liver, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

She said Snow is comfortable and feeling fine after his surgery and has pledged to aggressively fight the disease with an as-yet-to-be-determined chemotherapy treatment course. He will be in the hospital recovering from the surgery, a major procedure, for about a week.

"He said he's going to beat it again," Perino said in an emotional morning briefing with White House reporters. "When I talked to him, he was in very good spirits."


Now if we were like Rush Limbaugh, we would accuse the White House of timing this announcement as a distraction from l'affaire Gonzales. If we were like Katie Couric, we would say that "some say" the timing was suspicious. But since we still have our souls and our humanity, we know that cancer makes its own time, and it is never a good time for cancer. So we will just say that our wishes are for Tony Snow, like Elizabeth Edwards and every other cancer patient, to somehow make it through, and our thoughts are with both families today.

A POSTSCRIPT: I don't know enough about Tony Snow's previous bout with colon cancer to know if he had undergone screening previously, but just as Elizabeth Edwards' cancer should prompt every woman over the age of 40 to get a baseline mammogram if she hasn't already done so and every woman who's been putting it off for years to make an appointment; so Snow's cancer should prompt everyone who is 50 or over to make an appointment for a colonoscopy. I am the biggest wuss in the world where medical procedures in the world are concerned and I was terrified about it. Mine showed one small polyp, which was removed, and I have to go in again in three years. And you can bet that by mid-2009, I'll have had another one. These screenings are not foolproof, but right now they're the best tool we have.

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