John McCain: Dead man walking?

A medical records transcriptionist suggests that John McCain's cancer diagnosis means he has only a few years to live at best.

My take on this notion: McCain's last major melanoma incident was in 2000. He had a minor incident in 2002. It is now 2008. Reality is that if he made it to six years since the last recurrence of the cancer, he's probably in pretty good shape, most recurrences occur within the first five years. One doctor said that he figures that given no recurrence in 5 years, McCain has about a 10% chance of recurrence within the next 5 years.

My understanding is that lymph node removal was common in 2000 for Class II melanomas because they had not yet determined good ways to detect melanoma cells in lymph nodes at the time and were taking a "better safe than sorry" approach back then. Today they don't do that because of the side effects and because they have better ways to check lymph nodes for escaped melanoma cells. BTW, this is why McCain's face looks puffy on the left side, that's a side effect of the lymph node removal.

I do not believe that John McCain is a healthy man, but melanoma is the least of my worries. I'm more worried about the fact that he has shown far too many "senior moments" these past few months, giving rise to concerns about whether he is in early-stage Alzheimer's. The question of when a President is disabled, when talking about a disease such as Alzheimer's, is one that has never been medically or Constitutionally answered before. Indeed, when the current Constitutional provisions for Presidential succession were created, Alzheimer's wasn't even a recognized disease. To say that setting up the U.S. for a Constitutional crisis is not a good idea in these troubled times is an understatement of vast proportions.

-- Badtux the Healthcare Penguin