Cameron Joseph contributed reporting.
Former Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) underwent surgery Monday to remove a tumor from his pancreas, Reid’s family said in a statement Monday.
Reid served as Senate majority leader from 2007 to 2015, and then as minority leader for the last two years of his Senate career. He announced in March 2015 that he would not seek re-election the following year.
“Harry Reid is a fighter,” former Reid staffer Zac Petkanas told TPM. “Cancer won’t know what punched it in the face.”
“Like everything in his life, Reid is underestimated only to come out on top and stronger,” former staffer Kristen Orthman added. “I expect this to be no different.”
Former Reid staffer Adam Jentleson posted the statement online.
Please see the statement below from the family of Senator Reid. pic.twitter.com/JOxOJZtO7K
— Adam Jentleson (@AJentleson) May 14, 2018
This post has been updated.
My wife has lost several loved ones to pancreatic cancer.
(It tends to run in families, which horrifies us both, especially in regard to our little boy.)
The prognosis is almost universally bleak.
If Sen. Reid’s doctors caught it early, then he is very, very lucky.
Best wishes for a full recovery.
Is Shah going to be asked if someone in the White House will be making fun of THIS too?
I believe that pancreatic cancer is still a VERY VERY tough disease to beat. Indeed, I’m not sure it is ever really beaten. But someone out here must know more than I .
Yeah I was just thinking that for such a mystery organ, it seems to be very vital for life and cancer of it pretty much means you probably don’t have long to live.
I’ve been through this in the last few years with my mom. She is currently in remission.
Your odds are about 1 in 5. Early diagnosis helps. One of the challenges of pancreatic cancer is that your pancreas is very near a lot of other organs/structures that you sort of need to live (like, say, your mesenteric vein). If they can catch it before it engages with those other parts, your odds improve somewhat.
The surgery specifically for pancreatic cancer is called the Whipple procedure; I’ll let people decide if they want to look it up in detail for themselves but the mildest thing I can say is that it’s grueling. My mom had to have a cardiac stress test before the surgeon would schedule her surgery.
The chemotherapy is also grueling – my mom had to have a total of 12 cycles, and she has some permanent side effects from it (peripheral neuropathy for one).
The fact that Sen. Reid has had the surgery (and survived it) is a good sign. Not out of the woods by a long way, but maybe he has a compass and a whistle.