Reagan recovers from surgery

Press, 15 July 1985, Page 6

Reagan recovers from surgery

The President of the United States, Mr Ronald Reagan, is recovering after surgeons removed a large intestinal growth in his colon at the week-end.

No sign of cancer had been found in the liver or lymph nodes, doctors said, though it would not be known before today whether the growth, or polyp, was itself cancerous.

Mr Reagan, aged 74, who in an unprecedented step transferred Presidential authority to his Vice-Presi-dent, Mr George Bush, before the operation, reassumed authority as Chief Executive after about an eight-hour lapse. Arrangements were being made for Mr Reagan to run the Government from Bethesda (Maryland) Naval Hospital, in suburban Washington, for seven to 10 days while he recuperated. A White House spokes-

man, Larry Speakes, said that Mr Reagan was “generally without pain. He is conversant and ... his vital signs are good. He has no fever and his lab values are normal.”

The head of surgery at the hospital, Captain Dale Oller, United States Navy, had told Mr Reagan’s advisers, “If the President was needed to make a decision, he could make it,” Mr Speakes said. Dr Steven Rosenberg, of the National Cancer Institute, a member of the surgical team, said that Mr Reagan should feel no lasting physical effects from the operation and that total recovery should take six to eight weeks. “His operation went without incident and all the findings at the time of the surgery were normal,” Captain Oller said. “There was no sign of cancer what-

soever.” Doctors discovered the growth in the upper portion of the large intestine during an examination after removing a smaller, benign polyp that showed up during a physical examination in March. • Just as he did four years ago after he was shot in the lung, Mr Reagan provided a steady stream of one-line quips throughout his surgery. “After what you did to me yesterday, this ought to be a breeze,” Mr Reagan told his doctors as he prepared for what turned out to be two hours and 53 minutes of surgery.

Doctors had inserted a tube into his rectum on Saturday.

Still sedated after that procedure, Mr Reagan jokingly said to his wife, Nancy, “What was your name, again?”

When Mr Reagan was shot by John Hinckley on March 31, 1981, his first words to Nancy when she saw him at hospital were, “Honey, I forgot to duck.” Later, when his senior aides arrived, Mr Reagan asked them, “Who’s minding the store?” Still later he told doctors at George Washington Hospital, “Please tell me you’re all Republicans.”

After that operation, when Mr Reagan could not talk because of tubes in his mouth, he wrote the epitaph of the late comedian, W. C. Fields, down on a piece of K, “All in all, I’d rather Philadelphia.”

• The Associated Press reports that Mr Reagan’s older brother, Neil, underwent the same type of intestinal surgery as the President earlier this month.