John McCain Has Brain Cancer, Office Says
Arizona Senator John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, has been diagnosed with brain cancer, his office announced in a statement from Mayo Clinic on Wednesday night.
Following a routine procedure last Friday to remove a blood clot above his left eye at Mayo Clinic Hospital in Phoenix, “subsequent tissue pathology revealed that a primary brain tumor known as a glioblastoma was associated with the blood clot.”
According to the statement:
The Senator and his family are reviewing further treatment options with his Mayo Clinic care team. Treatment options may include a combination of chemotherapy and radiation… The Senator’s doctors say he is recovering from his surgery ‘amazingly well’ and his underlying health is excellent.
McCain, 80, was re-elected to a sixth term in November. Upon hearing this news, members from both parties took to Twitter to offer support.
“John McCain is an American hero & one of the bravest fighters I’ve ever known,” tweeted former President Barack Obama. “Cancer doesn’t know what it’s up against. Give it hell, John.”
John McCain is an American hero & one of the bravest fighters I’ve ever known. Cancer doesn’t know what it’s up against. Give it hell, John.
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) July 20, 2017
Meghan McCain, the Senator’s daughter, also shared a powerful tribute to her dad:
Statement regarding my father @SenJohnMcCain: pic.twitter.com/SMte9Hkwkq
— Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) July 20, 2017
Her post read:
The news of my father’s illness has affected every one of us in the McCain family. My grandmother, mother, brothers, sister and I have all endured the shock of the news, and now we live with the anxiety about what comes next. It is an experience familiar to us, given my father’s previous battle with cancer — and it is familiar to countless American families whose loved ones are also stricken with the tragedy of disease and the inevitability of age. If we could ask anything of anyone now, it would be the prayers of those of you who understand this all too well. We would be so grateful for them.
It won’t surprise you to learn that in all this, the one of us who is most confident and calm is my father. He is the toughest person I know. The cruelest enemy could not break him. The aggressions of political life could not bend him. So he is meeting this challenge as he has every other. Cancer may afflict him in many ways: but it will not make him surrender. Nothing ever has.
My love for my father is boundless, and like any daughter, I cannot and do not wish to be in a world without him. I have faith that those days remain far away. Yet even in this moment, my fears for him are overwhelmed by one thing above all: gratitude for our years together, and the years still to come. He is a warrior at dusk, one of the greatest Americans of our age, and the worthy heir to his father’s and grandfather’s name. But to me he is something more. He is my strength, my example, my refuge, my confidante, my teacher, my rock, my hero — my dad.
Photo via Facebook – John McCain