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"A comprehensive, collaborative elections resource."
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A second chance
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Candidate
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| Contributor | McCord 2014 |
| Last Edited | McCord 2014 Dec 01, 2008 12:01pm |
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| Category | News |
| Media | Newspaper - Doylestown (PA) Intelligencer |
| News Date | Monday, December 1, 2008 06:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | Mike Fitzpatrick was told he had colon cancer in June. It was stage three cancer, which means it had spread to his lymph nodes.
The former Bucks County congressman found himself facing his own mortality.
“You want to know how is it to be told you have cancer?” he asked, exiting a hospital elevator earlier this week on his way to a morning session of chemotherapy.
He is 45 and has a wife and six children.
“I ignored the symptoms from about, let's see, January,” he said, entering the treatment suite. He removed his suit coat and draped it over a chair.
Last May, he said, at his wife's insistence, he went for exams and tests. In early June, he was told about the cancer.
“The first hour was, well, basically disbelief. Then there was another hour of self-pity. After that it was like, OK, I have six kids. What do I have to do to beat this?”
Fitzpatrick settled into the chair. He unbuttoned his shirt. Blood was drawn. A thin plastic tube curled from an IV bag filled with clear liquid and was anchored to a port in his chest.
The two-hour chemo drip began. He is a veteran of this procedure, and he chatted amiably through it.
Because of his relative youth, his doctors recommended an aggressive treatment program of radiation and chemo to shrink the colon tumor. Afterward, whatever was left would be cut out — a major surgery that would leave him down and out for five to six weeks.
But in mid October, he got good news. His doctor, examining his CT scans, said the tumor appeared to have vanished.
“Melted away,” Fitzpatrick said.
The surgery was canceled.
“I left that doctor's office and I felt free,” he said.
Could the cancer return? Yes.
“I'm not counting on it, though,” he said.
A nurse checked the IV bag.
“The steroid they give me will keep me awake all night. That's OK. I'll be in court tomorrow. I can do paperwork overnight,” he said.
Since losing his congressional seat in 2006, Fitzpatrick h |
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