TORONTO (AP) – Doctors say Toronto Mayor Rob Ford will undergo 40 days of chemotherapy to treat a rare and difficult-to-beat cancer that forced him to drop his bid for re-election.
Dr. Zane Cohen, a colorectal surgeon at Mount Sinai hospital, said Wednesday Ford has a malignant liposarcoma. Ford has been hospitalized for a week with a tumor in his abdomen and the news of the cancer comes just days after Ford’s dramatic announcement that he was pulling out of a re-election campaign.
Cohen said the cancer is spreading and that they have found “a small nodule in the buttock” near the left hip. He said the mayor will be treated with fairly intensive chemotherapeutic agents within the next two days.
“The plan will be, initially, chemotherapy,” Cohen said. “We think it’s fairly an aggressive tumor.”
He said Ford had a CT scan in 2011 and there was no sign of the tumor then. “But we’re treating this very aggressively in order to eradicate the tumor.”