Family and Friends Pray for Ted Kennedy

SENATOR KENNEDY’S FAMILY, FRIENDS REELING AFTER GRIM DIAGNOSIS

BOSTON (AP) - The grim diagnosis that Sen. Edward M. Kennedy has an almost certainly fatal brain tumor was “a real curveball” that left his family stunned even as he joked and laughed with them, his wife told her friends.

In her first public comments on her husband’s diagnosis, Vicki Kennedy expressed pride in how well her husband of 15 years was handling the news.

“Teddy is leading us all, as usual, with his calm approach to getting the best information possible,” she wrote in an e-mail Tuesday to friends.

“He’s also making me crazy (and making me laugh) by pushing to race in the Figawi this weekend,” she wrote, referring to the annual sailing race from Cape Cod to Nantucket.

An Associated Press photographer who was given access to the senator on Tuesday captured Kennedy, dressed in a gray sweater and dark slacks, joking and laughing with family members as he sat at a table in a family room at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Doctors discovered the cancerous tumor after the 76-year-old senator suffered a seizure over the weekend. Outside experts predicted he had no more than three years - and perhaps far less - to live.

Family members with suitcases bunked with Kennedy overnight. Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., was determined not to leave until doctors settled on a treatment plan.

“Obviously it’s tough news for any son to hear,” said Robin Costello, a spokeswoman for Patrick Kennedy. “He’s comforted by the fact that his dad is such a fighter, and if anyone can get through something as challenging as this, it would be his father.”

The diagnosis cast a pall over Capitol Hill, where the Massachusetts Democrat has served since 1962, and came as a shock to a family all too accustomed to sudden, calamitous news.

“He’s had a biopsy, and we don’t yet have final pathology or a plan or course of treatment. But I have to be honest, we’ve been pitched a real curveball,” Vicki Kennedy wrote.

Doctors said the senator had a malignant glioma in the left parietal lobe, a region of the brain that helps govern sensation, movement and language. Malignant gliomas are diagnosed in about 9,000 Americans a year; in general, half of all patients die within a year.

“It’s treatable but not curable. You can put it into remission for a while but it’s not a curable tumor,” said Dr. Suriya Jeyapalan, a neuroncologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

The doctors said Kennedy will remain in the hospital for the next couple of days as they consider chemotherapy and radiation. They did not mention surgery, a possible indication the tumor is inoperable.

In a statement Tuesday, Dr. Lee Schwamm, vice chairman of neurology at Massachusetts General, and Dr. Larry Ronan, Kennedy’s primary physician, said the senator “remains in good overall condition, and is up and walking around the hospital.”

“He remains in good spirits and full of energy,” the physicians said.

Senators of both parties heard about his condition during their weekly, closed-door policy lunches, and some looked drawn or misty-eyed as they emerged.

Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., the longest-serving member of the Senate, wept as he prayed for “my dear, dear friend, dear friend, Ted Kennedy” during a speech on the Senate floor.

“Keep Ted here for us and for America,” said the 90-year-old Byrd, who is in a wheelchair. He added: “Ted, Ted, my dear friend, I love you and I miss you.”

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