Cardinal recovering 8/6/06

Cardinal recovering
No cancer reported following bladder surgery

By Michelle Martin
Staff writer

Catholics and others across the Archdiocese of Chicago breathed a sigh of relief July 31 when doctors at Loyola University Medical Center announced that the cancer in Cardinal George’s bladder and ureters had not spread.

Dr. Myles Sheehan, Cardinal George’s personal physician and a Jesuit priest, opened the press conference by saying, “Given what we knew entering into the cardinal’s surgery on Thursday we are happy to report the best possible outcome. The tumor was contained within the bladder and ureters without evidence of going into the lymph nodes or metastasizing.”

The cardinal, who he said was already reviewing current church issues, should be able to resume his regular duties in several weeks, he said.

Cardinal George, 69, underwent a five-hour operation July 27 at the Maywood hospital to remove his bladder, prostate gland and sections of his ureters—the tubes that carry urine from the kidneys to the bladder. Just before midnight that night, he went back into surgery after his blood pressure became unstable; doctors found a small bleeding artery and closed it off.

Shortly after the first operation, Cardinal George’s medical team addressed journalists at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood after concluding the surgery, which included removing part of the blocked ureter and Cardinal George’s prostate gland as well as his bladder.

The pathology report, delivered to the cardinal at various times by the surgeon, Dr. James Flanigan, Sheehan and Dr. Eva Wojcik, a pathologist, showed a small, incidental cancer in his prostate gland, which happens about a third of the time when a man has his prostate removed as part of bladder cancer surgery. The small tumor was “incidental,” Sheehan said, and not related to the bladder cancer.

The report also showed an invasive tumor in the muscle wall of the bladder, where the right ureter opened into the bladder. That tumor had not spread beyond the bladder wall, and no cancer was present in any of the lymph nodes.

In addition, a superficial cancer called “carcinoma in situ” had affected much of the interior of the bladder and the lower ends of both ureters, Sheehan said.

Flanigan put the five-year prognosis for Cardinal George’s stage of cancer at 70-80 percent.

“We do not know absolutely that the cardinal is cured,” Sheehan said. “We can say the cardinal is a cancer survivor with a good prognosis and there is no evidence of any cancer within his body.”

Given the results of the pathology report, Sheehan said Cardinal George will not need any radiation of chemotherapy as follow-up, and once he finishes recuperating, he should be able to return to his full duties as cardinal archbishop of Chicago.

“I hope he will be not quite so vigorous with his schedule, but I’ve felt that a long time,” Sheehan said.

Indeed, the cardinal had already been reviewing some archdiocesan matters with the vicar general, Father John Canary, and will likely assume some limited duties around Labor Day, Sheehan said.

In the meantime, he was up and walked with the help of a walker on July 31, and will begin physical therapy to regain strength, especially in his lower leg, which was weakened by a childhood bout with polio.

Also on July 31, he was allowed to begin eating again, “starting with a delicious clear liquid diet.”

Colleen Dolan, the archdiocesan director of communications, reported that the cardinal had been reading his menu and was relieved to see he could still have some of his favorite foods—chocolate, peanut butter, pasta and ice cream among them.

“He’s really had his sense of humor throughout all of this,” she said. “He has a very dry wit.”

Barring anything unforeseen, Sheehan said the cardinal could expect to return home in about a week.

But, he said, there still could be complications.

“It’s like in the ‘Wizard of Oz,’” he said. “There’s a straight path through the forest, but there are lions and tigers and bears in the forest.”

Following the release of the pathology report July 21, Flanigan also said the cardinal had authorized him to discuss the method doctors used to divert the urine coming from his kidneys. Essentially, he said, they used a section of bowel to create a new bladder that was attached to the ureters coming from his kidneys and to the urethra, which means the cardinal should be able to urinate normally.

Sheehan said the cardinal first called him to report seeing blood in his urine June 8. After preliminary tests, doctors looked into his bladder with a scope and found “atypical cells.” Biopsies and CT scans July 14 showed that the cancer was “carcinoma in situ,” a superficial but high-grade form of cancer. They also showed that the right ureter was partially blocked by the cancer.

That led to the decision to remove the entire bladder—which Sheehan called “an aggressive approach”--rather than trying to eradicate the cancer cells while leaving the bladder intact.

Sheehan said there was no sign of the cancer as recently as January, when the cardinal had a urinalysis when he was hospitalized for a different problem, although the cancer was probably already growing.

The cardinal announced his illness July 26 in a statement to all Catholics in the archdiocese. The statement was read to Pastoral Center employees by Chancellor Jimmy Lago at a meeting.

“I am informed that I can expect to make a full recovery from this cancer and the surgery to remove it,” the cardinal said in his statement. “I ask my fellow priests, the religious, all Catholics in the archdiocese and other friends and colleagues to pray for me. I trust that the Lord will give me the strength and grace I need during these next days and weeks.”

Father John Canary, the vicar general, will provide “day-to-day governance” of the archdiocese.

According to the American Cancer Society, bladder cancer is the fourth most frequently diagnosed cancer among men and the eighth most common among women. The cancer society estimates that there will be about 61,420 new cases of bladder cancer diagnosed this year; and about 13,060 deaths from the cancer.