http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/03/politics/campaign/03h... Senator John Kerry, a lean athlete who is the picture of health as he skis, skates, cycles and windsurfs, is in robust condition, he and his doctors said in their first extended interviews discussing his medical history.
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The likelihood that he is going to have a significant problem with this cancer is infinitesimally small," said Dr. Patrick C. Walsh, the Johns Hopkins University urologist who performed the operation. The five-year death rate for the kind of prostate cancer that Mr. Kerry developed is virtually zero.
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However, CT scan X-rays taken at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston document that two pieces of metal shrapnel are embedded deep in Mr. Kerry's left thigh, next to the femur, said Dr. Gerald J. Doyle, Mr. Kerry's personal physician in Boston who reviewed the X-rays at the request of this reporter, who is a physician. Doctors treating the wound in 1969 decided to leave the shrapnel in place. "One piece of shrapnel is about the size of a bullet, the other a bit smaller," Dr. Doyle said.
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Mr. Kerry has colonoscopies every three years because of polyps that were detected in 1985 and 1993. None were found on his last colonoscopy two years ago. He has tested negative for H.I.V., and has never been in trouble with the law for drug or alcohol abuse.