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2017-07-20 -Signs, Portents, and the Weather-
John McCain, 80, is diagnosed with brain cancer
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Posted by Fred 2017-07-20 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11127 views ]  Top

#1 Well... I won't wish him ill.

I will just wish it goes quickly with little pain.

Having watched two family members die from cancer that is the best that can happen to him.
Posted by DarthVader 2017-07-20 00:05||   2017-07-20 00:05|| Front Page Top

#2 Well... Goodbye.
Posted by Crusock Pholurong1361 2017-07-20 00:36||   2017-07-20 00:36|| Front Page Top

#3 That explains much.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2017-07-20 02:58||   2017-07-20 02:58|| Front Page Top

#4 Sic semper Deep State tyrannis.
Posted by Harcourt Angoluting9366 2017-07-20 03:45||   2017-07-20 03:45|| Front Page Top

#5 Buh bye, John!
Posted by Hupeart Thaitch2372 2017-07-20 05:16||   2017-07-20 05:16|| Front Page Top

#6 Decent sympathy for a terminally ill person aside, who is going to miss:

Bombing solves everything
Arming our enemies is a good idea
Turning every aspect of the SASC into a grandstand
Posted by M. Murcek 2017-07-20 06:49||   2017-07-20 06:49|| Front Page Top

#7 You forgot "Lets have nuclear exchange with Russia", MM.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2017-07-20 07:02||   2017-07-20 07:02|| Front Page Top

#8 And in other news: Trump orders the CIA to halt all financial, military aid for [moderate Islamic] rebels in Syria
Posted by Besoeker 2017-07-20 07:30||   2017-07-20 07:30|| Front Page Top

#9 You think CIA will obey, Besoeker?
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2017-07-20 07:56||   2017-07-20 07:56|| Front Page Top

#10 Yes, there will at least be an appearance of compliance. Work-around's take time.
Posted by Besoeker 2017-07-20 08:04||   2017-07-20 08:04|| Front Page Top

#11 "God's" term limits. It's a symptom of the death of the old republic when those in office have to literally die off to allow the orderly transfer of power.
Posted by Procopius2k 2017-07-20 08:27||   2017-07-20 08:27|| Front Page Top

#12 I guess retirement wasn't his thing.
Posted by Abu Uluque 2017-07-20 10:46||   2017-07-20 10:46|| Front Page Top

#13 If it really is glioblastoma, then he's dead. Just a matter of time, and not much time at that. The question is whether he will resign, or hold onto his seat until the icy hand of death wrenches it from his white-knuckled grip.
Posted by Iblis 2017-07-20 10:59||   2017-07-20 10:59|| Front Page Top

#14 Been reading comments from around the Interwebs. Nobody likes the guy. How did he keep getting elected?
Posted by Iblis 2017-07-20 11:13||   2017-07-20 11:13|| Front Page Top

#15 ...GOPe.
Posted by Procopius2k 2017-07-20 11:44||   2017-07-20 11:44|| Front Page Top

#16 Nobody likes the guy. How did he keep getting elected? Brain-dead, dumbed-down electorate is my best guess.
Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2017-07-20 12:10||   2017-07-20 12:10|| Front Page Top

#17 Damn, he must have pissed off God to get the Ted Kennedy treatment going out.
Posted by Charles 2017-07-20 12:13||   2017-07-20 12:13|| Front Page Top

#18 If I ever contract glioblastoma I hope I am a U.S. Senator.
Posted by regular joe 2017-07-20 12:31||   2017-07-20 12:31|| Front Page Top

#19 Copied:

Medical professional here. Really sad to hear he has GBM. Here's a quick run-down:
1) Occurs most often in old people, but can happen in younger people. Prognosis is worse in the elderly (>65), McCain is 81. Median survival with treatment is ~12 months in the latest studies (I earlier reported some data from a couple years ago that was lower). More on that below if you find that kind of stuff interesting.
2) We've got no real idea how to treat this well. Old people sometimes get less aggressive treatment, which perhaps contributes to their worse prognosis. Most common option is just to throw things at it: Surgery to remove the cancer, then followed by radiation and/or chemotherapy. In the elderly the radiation/chemo is sometimes not done because the toxicity is high and the added benefit is less. There are new clinical trials being tested, nothing has been promising so far but sometimes if you have a specific mutation in your cancer you can get lucky.
3) Really rough disease, recurrence is extremely common and occurs within a year. Patients have seizures, headaches, nausea. As it progresses you'll get incontinence, increased falls, and eventually delirium.
My heart goes out to his family. :(
Edit: There's been debate about the prognosis, I'm including this here from a comment I made:
Which study are you seeing 17 +/- 5 months in? I'm no GBM specialist by any stretch, but the data I've seen is <12 months median survival with full treatment.
1) Rusthoven et al (2016) did a large retrospective study (n = 16,717) and Overall Survival was 9.0 months with combined therapy. Granted "combined" included patients who only received 2 combinations, but still I haven't seen great numbers for older patients with GBM.
2) Babu et al (2016) got 12 months, up to 14.1 in those with gross total resection. But this was looking at only 120 patients.
3) Franceschi et al (2016) got 11.1 months, though a subtype with MGMT methylation got up to 17.2. But this was even smaller (N <30) and done in italy.
I've seen some good looking stuff with bevacizumab, supposedly Babu got patients median survival of 20 months with bevacizumab + XRT + surgery, but I haven't seen numbers that good anywhere else so I'm not sure if its consistent with the other data. One can speculate that it's higher but I err on the side of conservatism and would want to see better data before making that claim.
Posted by Harcourt Angoluting9366 2017-07-20 13:14||   2017-07-20 13:14|| Front Page Top

#20 Surgery to remove the cancer, then followed by radiation and/or chemotherapy.

Butchered than poisoned for maybe a 3-4 month extension to the sentence, no thanks.
Posted by Skidmark 2017-07-20 13:58||   2017-07-20 13:58|| Front Page Top

#21 #14 Been reading comments from around the Interwebs. Nobody likes the guy. How did he keep getting elected?

McCain leveraged his POW experience in the Hanoi Hilton to the max in his campaign. Made it sound what he endured then was extremely patriotic, a real tear jerker messaging campaign. His campaign people honed that message to a T. Tried to make you feel like a slob for not voting him.
Posted by Beldar Thraiger8236 2017-07-20 14:26||   2017-07-20 14:26|| Front Page Top

#22 Sounds like keeping them as comfortable as possible should be the priority.
Posted by Abu Uluque 2017-07-20 14:26||   2017-07-20 14:26|| Front Page Top

#23 My father had glioblastoma. He lived two pretty good years (despite chemo) and then the went quickly in the last month.
Posted by rjschwarz 2017-07-20 14:56||   2017-07-20 14:56|| Front Page Top

#24 Out of curiosity are any others of the Keating 5 still around?
Posted by 3dc 2017-07-20 16:50||   2017-07-20 16:50|| Front Page Top

#25 Cranston - dead
DeConcini - alive
McCain - alive
Glenn - dead
Riegle - alive
Different set of laws for Senators as opposed to the rest of us - very alive
Posted by M. Murcek 2017-07-20 18:04||   2017-07-20 18:04|| Front Page Top

#26 What I'm really looking forward to is Meggie Moo's matriculation at Smoking Gun once her 15 minutes are up.
Posted by M. Murcek 2017-07-20 18:12||   2017-07-20 18:12|| Front Page Top

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