From TIME Magazine, 5/14/08:
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1779596,00.html
How Healthy Is John McCain?
By MICHAEL SCHERER AND ALICE PARK
It was the size of a dime and as thick as a nickel—a discolored blotch
on John McCain's left temple.
He didn't pay it much mind during the heat of the 2000 Republican
primary campaign.
But after losing the nomination to George W. Bush, the Arizona Senator
found himself with time to spare.
So as Bush celebrated victory, McCain headed to the National Naval
Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., to have the spot checked out.
Less than three weeks later, McCain endured 5˝ hours of surgery to
remove a patch of skin including the blemish, roughly 5 cm (2 in.)
wide.
The diagnosis:
Stage 2A melanoma, an invasive form of skin cancer that claims the
lives of up to 34% of those diagnosed within 10 years.
Doctors also made an incision down his left cheek to remove lymph
nodes in his neck in case the cancer had spread; they found it had
not.
The surgery left a large scar, and for weeks McCain retreated from
public view to recover.
Losing the G.O.P. nomination in 2000 gave McCain time to catch and
treat the cancer at an early stage, which possibly saved his life.
"If it was left alone, the risk was high that that melanoma would not
just have become thicker but would also almost certainly have spread
to the lymph nodes," says Dr. Jeffrey Lee, a cancer physician at the
M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, who did not participate in McCain's care.
"And the assumption would be that could occur within a period of a few
months, if it hadn't happened already."
Eight years later, McCain at 71 finds himself on his way to another
Republican Convention, and the questions about his health are no
longer secondary to his political fortunes.
If he were to win in November, he would become the oldest first-term
President in U.S. history.
To make the issue more pronounced, his likely opponent is young enough
to be his son; at 46, Barack Obama hopes to become the fifth youngest
President ever.
McCain's handlers know his age is both a strength and a weakness, one
that his campaign is acutely sensitive about.
Early this month, aides pounced on Obama's suggestion in a television
interview that McCain was "losing his bearings as he pursues the
nomination" by making negative attacks.
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Harry
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