BOSTON — Stricken with a cancerous brain tumor in the autumn of his storied political career, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy was facing a daunting treatment regimen with "good spirits," his doctors here said Tuesday, while his family and political friends struggled with the uncertain realities posed by the stark diagnosis.
Medical tests performed over the weekend revealed that the 76-year-old Massachusetts Democrat has a malignant glioma on the left side of his brain. About 9,000 malignant glioma diagnoses are made in the U.S. each year, and survival rates are bleak for severe cases.
Kennedy's doctors took care not to describe the tumor's size or state of advancement. They did say that preliminary tests showed that the tumor was in Kennedy's parietal lobe, a section of the brain crucial for speech comprehension -- and an area that would complicate any immediate efforts to remove the cancer in its entirety.
Kennedy was airlifted from his Cape Cod home to Massachusetts General Hospital after a seizure Saturday. His doctors said Tuesday that he "has had no further seizures, remains in good overall condition, and is up and walking around the hospital."
In the clubby Senate anterooms of Washington's Capitol, where Kennedy has held forth since 1962 after filling the seat vacated by his brother, President Kennedy, fellow lawmakers struggled with their emotions and memories.
Democratic senators emerged ashen-faced from their weekly luncheon after Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada broke the news. West Virginia Sen. Robert C. Byrd, 90, wept from his wheelchair on the Senate floor when he tried to deliver a tribute. "Ted, Ted, my dear friend, I love you and miss you," Byrd said haltingly.
In the 28 years since he gave up his dream of a presidential bid, Kennedy has fashioned himself as the premier architect of across-the-aisle legislative dealmaking in the Senate. He was intimately involved in crafting and shepherding definitive healthcare, pension and immigration bills.
When necessary, the eight-term senator has transformed himself into an agile compromiser, one who coaxed fellow Democrats into backing President Bush's "No Child Left Behind" education bill.
Bush saluted Kennedy on Tuesday as "a man of tremendous courage."
