Bush's press secretary faces another bout with cancer

WASHINGTON -- When President Bush asked Tony Snow to become his press secretary last year, Snow didn't agree until his doctors told him there were no signs of the colon cancer for which he had been treated in 2005.

Based on that assurance, he accepted one of the most demanding jobs in Washington.

But early yesterday morning, Snow told Bush that the cancer had returned -- and had spread to his liver and elsewhere.

The report of the recurrence saddened the White House staff, which has come to count on the former Fox News commentator to convey the administration's views to an increasingly skeptical public and, as the personable face of the White House, to defend it against daily challenges from the Democratic Congress.

"He is not going to let this whip him, and he's upbeat," Bush said in the White House Rose Garden yesterday morning.

The disclosure of Snow's diagnosis followed the announcement last week that Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of Democratic presidential contender John Edwards, was about to begin treatment for a recurrence of breast cancer, even as she and her husband continued to campaign.

Snow's response that day was emotional: "As somebody who has been through this, Elizabeth Edwards is setting a powerful example for a lot of people, and a good and positive one," he said.

The next day, he announced he was undergoing surgery Monday for a small growth in his abdomen that doctors had been tracking for several months. All tests were negative for cancer, Snow told reporters, but he was having it removed "out of an aggressive sense of caution."

Yesterday morning, Snow's deputy, Dana Perino, paused to regain her composure and dabbed at her eyes as she revealed her boss's condition just moments after speaking with him.

The doctors found "that the growth was cancerous and there has been some metastases, including to the liver," she said later at a televised news briefing. White House officials have not said where Snow, who lost his mother to colon cancer when he was 17, is being treated.

The removed growth is in the same area as the previous cancer, Perino said. The metastasis, or spread, to the liver is on the organ but has not invaded it, she added. She said she did not know where else cancer was found.

"He told me that he beat this thing before," Perino said, "and he intends to beat it again."

Snow's staff and outside medical specialists said recovery from the surgery alone would take at least four weeks. He will have chemotherapy as well, Perino said.

"If a glass-half-full outlook plays a role in his recovery, he will be better and back pronto," Mary Matalin, a Republican adviser and a former senior aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, wrote in an e-mail exchange. "He is going to beat this."

Recalling Snow's kind words about his wife last week, Edwards issued a statement yesterday praising him as "an incredible example for people living with cancer and cancer survivors -- he lives every day to the fullest and faces every challenge with courage and determination."

Snow and his wife, Jill, have children ages 10, 11, and 14. In February 2005, after he was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer, surgeons removed his colon and reconstructed his small intestine to replace it. He also received chemotherapy for six months.

About 60 percent of patients with stage 3 colon cancer survive five years after initial treatment, Dr. Harmon J. Eyre, the chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society, said in a statement. That designation indicates that the disease has spread to nearby lymph nodes.

In some cases, said Dr. Lee S. Rosen, a specialist in gastrointestinal cancers and the president of Premiere Oncology, a treatment center in Santa Monica, Calif., tumors either can be shrunk by chemotherapy and removed surgically or can be kept from growing. Side effects in some patients might include nausea, vomiting and fatigue; in others the treatment is less debilitating and patients are able to work full time.

Snow's job often requires him to leave his home in Alexandria, Va., before dawn and return home after dark. He is Bush's third press secretary, following Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.