Confirmed: Chavez off to Cuba for more cancer surgery
Chavez says he will go to Cuba for surgery
Caracas, Venezuela (CNN) -- Speculation and messages of support surged in Venezuela Wednesday, a day after President Hugo Chavez announced he would travel to Cuba for surgery.
Doctors there will remove a lesion in the coming days from the same area of his body where doctors removed a cancerous tumor last year, Chavez said.
The 57-year-old Venezuelan leader told state media in a phone interview late Tuesday that there was a high likelihood that the lesion was cancerous, due to its location, which he did not disclose.
"If it turns out to be malignant there will surely need to be another phase of radiation therapy, and this would slow me down, of course," he said.
In June, Chavez said doctors in Cuba had removed a cancerous tumor but did not specify what type of cancer it was.
He announced in October that treatment had cured him of cancer.
Word of the new operation, which Chavez first announced on state television Tuesday afternoon, comes at a critical time, about seven months ahead of a presidential election.
Yep, he's a fool. Politics aside, if you had a serious health problem and could afford to go anywhere you wanted for treatment, would you go to Cuba? I mean, please. True, in Cuba they'll do everything they can to save him, since they depend on his largess, but Cuba is not even remotely the optimal place for what he needs medically. Even for Fidel, they had to fly in a surgeon from Spain to save his ass. Apparently, Hugo is as stupid as he looks.
I think the monkey clown is in serious trouble because is not a good sign that his cancer is coming back in the same spot after all those chemo treatments.
And still, no official word on what specific cancer he has. Well, at least he admitted having cancer. FDR or JFK wouldn't have, unless it became impossible to hide it.
Who knows --- maybe the cuban oncologists let him chew on those coca leaves he gets from Evo, something that any other doctor probably wouldn't allow if he went elsewhere.
The magnitude of Hugo’s apparent stupidity is such that one must consider the possibility that this cancer business is a hoax, calculated to curry sympathy and make him look “brave” and “heroic” carrying on for “the people” in the face of death. Also, the cancer thing deflects criticism and distracts from the continuing downward spiral of the country he grotesquely mismanages, and if he's faking it, the highly overrated Cuban health system will get credit for "saving" him. He’s never looked especially sick; anybody can shave his head, and he could take steroids reasonably safely under medical supervision to achieve the bloated look. It’s certainly not out of the question that it's all greatly exaggerated or simply false. If he really has cancer and he's trusting his fate to the Cuban medical system when he could get treated anywhere, he's a fool.
asombra,
You need to consider that Chavez has not gone for treatment to friendly countries like Brazil because he's afraid the truth about his condition is revealed.
It's entirely possible that he could be faking the cancer, but all the information leaked so far is indicative of a cancer that is spreading because the treatment used to fight it has not been able to contain it and put it in remission.
The real question here should be how fast (or slow) Chavez's cancer is spreading.