Senator John McCain has been diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor, his family said in a statement on Wednesday, July 19.
The diagnosis comes following a procedure the Republican politician from Arizona underwent last week.
“On Friday, July 14, Sen. John McCain underwent a procedure to remove a blood clot from above his left eye at Mayo Clinic Hospital in Phoenix,” the statement from his family and the Mayo Clinic read. “Subsequent tissue pathology revealed that a primary brain tumor known as a glioblastoma was associated with the blood clot.”
The statement added that the 80-year-old former presidential candidate is recovering from his surgery “amazingly well” and his underlying health is excellent as he and his family review further treatment options that “may include a combination of chemotherapy and radiation.”
The senator’s office also released a statement thanking people for the outpouring of support he has received since his surgery on Friday.
“He is in good spirits as he continues to recover at home with his family in Arizona,” the statement read. “He is grateful to the doctors and staff at Mayo Clinic for their outstanding care, and is confident that any future treatment will be effective. Further consultations with Senator McCain’s Mayo Clinic care team will indicate when he will return to the United States Senate.”
Meghan McCain, the senator’s daughter, released a statement on Twitter on Wednesday evening about her father’s diagnosis.
“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,” she wrote. “It is an experience familiar to us, given my father’s previous battle with cancer — and familiar to the 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.”
Statement regarding my father @SenJohnMcCain: pic.twitter.com/SMte9Hkwkq
— Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) July 20, 2017
“It won’t surprise you to learn that in all this, the one of us who is most confident and calm is my father,” she continued. “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,” Meghan concluded. “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.”
