Thyroid Cancer

Arizona Diamondbacks left-hander Doug Davis has been diagnosed with thyroid cancer. "We don't know much, other than he does have thyroid cancer," team President Derrick Hall said in a telephone interview on Friday. "It's saddening. It was a complete surprise to the entire organization, and to him."

When I learned recently that yet another friend had been diagnosed with cancer, I experienced my usual reaction: disbelief and sadness, followed by anger at Life In General. But for the first time, I also saw what these under-35 friends and family members have in common. They, or those they love, talk about their illness with a refreshing frankness.

Thyroid cancer, a disease that afflicts about 23,000 people in the United States each year, is usually curable -- except for a rare variety that is among the deadliest of all tumors. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist has not specified which form of the disease he has. There are four major types of thyroid cancer. Papillary and follicular cancer, which account for as many as 85% of all cases, are considered easily treatable.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist was sent home after spending a week in the hospital for treatment of thyroid cancer. A Supreme Court spokesman announced the 80-year-old Rehnquist's release from the National Naval Medical Center in suburban Bethesda, Md.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, heightening the uncertainty that surrounds the Supreme Court on the eve of the presidential election, announced Monday that he was undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatment for his thyroid cancer and would not return to work this week as he had hoped. "My plan to return to the office today was too optimistic," Rehnquist said in a statement issued by the court. "I am continuing to take radiation and chemotherapy treatments on an outpatient basis."

Neighbors of Rocketdyne's Santa Susana Field Laboratory sued the aerospace firm's parent company in federal court Monday, alleging that decades of nuclear and chemical research at the mountaintop complex poisoned their land and water and gave them cancer. Ten plaintiffs from Simi Valley and the San Fernando Valley filed a class-action suit against Boeing North American Inc., which in December bought the 2,668-acre research complex that its Rocketdyne division still runs.

Angel right fielder Tim Salmon got what he called "a reality check" this past week when his wife, Marci, was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. "It was a shellshocking revelation," said Salmon, who did not attend the Angels' game against Seattle in Anaheim Wednesday night but returned for this weekend's series in Toronto. "But we've met with the doctors, and they've eased our minds about it. This is something they can treat. It's not something that's terminal.

A former Simi Valley woman filed a federal lawsuit Monday against Rockwell Inc., claiming she contracted thyroid cancer while playing in the fields and drinking the water near the Santa Susana Field Laboratory. Summer Kristine Colvin, 23, who lived in the city from 1983 to 1986, alleged that the operators of the nuclear-reactor test lab failed to clean up the soil and water following meltdowns and radiation leaks. Colvin's attorney, Michael Kushner, said the suit filed in U. S.

An Oxnard man whose family carries a genetic mutation shared by only about seven families in the world was recovering Wednesday night from a 12-hour operation in Michigan, while his 22-month-old daughter is scheduled to undergo the same surgery today. Steven Schroeder, 30, and his daughter, Chelsea, are having their thyroid glands removed by surgeon Ruth Decker.