Arizona’s Republican Senator John McCain, a former Navy pilot, has been diagnosed with brain cancer.
Doctors on Friday removed what had first appeared on a CT scan to be a 5-centimeter (2-inch) blood clot over his left eye.
The 80-year-old senator had arrived for a scheduled routine annual medical exam early Friday morning at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix. He reported no complaints other than feeling slightly fatigued and episodes of intermittent double vision. But those he chalked up to an intensive schedule of international travel due to his work over the past several months. Nevertheless, doctors ordered a CT scan to rule out neurological and other issues.
After leaving the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, doctors evaluating the CT scan a second time called the senator and asked him to immediately return for an MRI. That’s when the five centimeter “blood clot” was spotted above his left eye, according to a report by CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who spoke exclusively with McCain’s doctors.
By 3 pm, McCain was in surgery to have the tumor and the blood clot removed. He is reportedly doing well, and doctors say they believe they removed the entire tumor.
The pathology report following the surgery confirmed the tumor is a glioblastoma, an aggressive cancer that forms in the brain and spinal cord, according to the American Brain Tumor Association. It is the same type of cancer that his son, Bo Biden, and U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy had.
Follow-up treatment is likely to include radiation and chemotherapy.
President Donald Trump, former President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu all tweeted support and ‘get well soon’ wishes, among others.
McCain’s daughter, Meghan McCain, tweeted Wednesday, “The news of my father’s illness has affected every one of us in the McCain family. It won’t surprise you to learn that in all this, the one of us who is most confident and calm is my father.”
McCain was discharged from the hospital on Saturday and has been recovering at home. He shows no sign of cognitive delays, according to the report, and has said he wants to “get back to work.”