Rep. John Lewis speaks during a news conference about voting rights, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 6, 2019.As a civil rights activist at 25, John Lewis was beaten so badly his skull was fractured and the TV images from an Alabama bridge in the 1960s forced a nation’s awakening to racial discrimination. As a congressman today at 79, Lewis is facing a foe like none before: advanced pancreatic cancer.
Lewis has had many battles, and this he views as one more dawning. He was arrested at least 40 times in the civil rights era, several more times as a congressman since being elected in 1986 and only recently he has been rallying to help reunite immigrant families separated by the Trump administration.The youngest and last survivor of the Big Six civil rights activists, a group once led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
“I have been in some kind of fight – for freedom, equality, basic human rights – for nearly my entire life,” he said.He declined to say where he would receive cancer treatment or what that would entail. But he said he may not always be around the halls of Congress in the coming weeks. Lewis also said he was “clear-eyed about the prognosis” even as doctors have told him that recent medical advances have made this type of cancer treatable in many cases. He added that “treatment options are no longer as debilitating as they once were.”The American Cancer Society estimates 3 per cent of patients with stage 4 pancreatic cancer are alive five years after being diagnosed.
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