Former Palm Beach County Congressman Foley to have prostate removed Friday
Former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley has prostate cancer and will undergo surgery today .
In a phone interview Thursday, Foley, 56, said he would enter the Global Robotics Institute at Florida Hospital in the town of Celebration early today and be on the operating table by 7 a.m.
He will undergo a procedure called robotic radical prostatectomy, which will involve the removal of his prostate gland through a small hole in the abdominal cavity. The surgery will be performed by Dr. Vipul Patel.
Foley, who lost his seat in Congress in 2006 after it was discovered he had sent sexually suggestive emails and instant messages to male congressional pages, said he had not had a full exam since that year.
It used to be so easy to do, up in Washington, he said. I’ve been to the doctor since then and I’d had some blood work done, but not a full exam.
Foley said he finally went for such an exam this year and received his results about eight weeks ago.
I realized they hadn’t measured my cholesterol or my PSA level, he said. PSA stands for prostrate specific antigen, a protein produced by the prostate, and a rise in its level can mean cancer.
For a man my age, that wasn’t a very good way to do a yearly exam, Foley said.
Foley had further tests done on his blood and found he had elevated PSA. He then went to a specialist, Dr. Neil Borland, a urologist from West Palm Beach. A biopsy was performed and Foley was found to have prostate cancer.
The cancer had not left the capsule, Foley said, referring to his prostate. We caught it in the nick of time, but if I had caught it even earlier, the surgery might have been less invasive. I’m told that removal will offer me the optimum outcome for a man my age.
Foley said his father died at age 86 from cancer, which started in his prostate. He said the fact his father had developed cancer so late in life had given him some false assumptions about prostate cancer.
My warning to everyone is, don’t assume you won’t develop this, he said. Make sure to go every year for an exam and don’t assume the right tests have been done. Make sure they are done.
Foley has been re-entering the public spotlight over the past 18 months. He launched a talk radio show last year and flirted with a run for the nonpartisan mayor’s office in West Palm Beach.
He also was on the host committee last year for a fundraiser for Republican Sharon Merchant’s failed state Senate bid and attended the opening of a district office in Palm Beach County by U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, earlier this year.
Staff researcher Niels Heimeriks contributed to this story.
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