John McCain has brain cancer

In about a year, Senator John McCain, who has lately been a major thorn in Donald Trump's side, will no longer be among us: he has been diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, the most aggressively malignant form of brain tumor there is. GBM took my mother, and before her, it took Senator Ted Kennedy. Median life expectancy after diagnosis is about twelve months; Mom lived nine months, and Kennedy lived fourteen or fifteen. What kills a person in the end isn't so much the tumor itself as the infection that results from a depressed immune system. I don't envy Senator McCain his final ride into the darkness.

John McCain has been a leader of the Republican wing of the Never Trumpers. While I find that his behavior of late has been obnoxiously obstructionist, I can understand, to some extent, his anger at Trump: you may recall the way Trump had declared McCain not to be a war hero (McCain is famous for having been a prisoner of war in Vietnam, during which time he was tortured to the point where he could—and can—no longer raise his hands over his shoulders) because, in Trump's view, war heroes don't get caught by the enemy. McCain had benefited for years from being nearly fetishized for being an ex-POW, and this harsh reality check from the unsubtle Trump was undoubtedly an enormous blow to the ego, and very likely the source of McCain's contrarian behavior over the past year or so. McCain's pettiness at the end of his career and life will not gain him plaudits from historians who review the latter part of his public service, but I suspect it's too late for the senator to change now.

Depending on what happens next with debulking surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy, McCain probably has a few months of functional time remaining to him. After that, the tumor will cross to his other brain hemisphere, and the resulting edema from the inexorable pressure of the ever-growing cancerous tissue will shut down McCain's cognitive functions. There may be seizures; there may even be changes in mood and personality; there will certainly be cognitive impairment. By that point, McCain will already have said goodbye to life as a senator and will have retreated from public view. We'll have silence for a few months before the sudden-but-expected announcement of McCain's passing, unless McCain turns out to be one of the lucky 1-2% of GBM victims who survive long-term after initial first-line therapy.

ADDENDUM: Styx's much harsher take on McCain, whom he hates, is here.