June 9 (UPI) — Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and Fox News political commentator Charles Krauthammer has announced he has cancer and likely will live only a few more weeks.
Krauthammer, 68, addressed his recent health issues in “a note to readers” published on The Washington Post website and read aloud on Fox News Friday.
In the brief message, the syndicated columnist and author of the book Things That Matter explained why he had been out of the spotlight for most of the year.
“I had thought that silence would soon be coming to an end, but I’m afraid I must tell you now that fate has decided on a different course for me,” he wrote.
Krauthammer — a trained psychiatrist who has been largely paralyzed from the neck down due to a diving accident during his first year at Harvard Medical School — explained how he underwent surgery last August to remove a cancerous tumor in his abdomen.
“That operation was thought to have been a success, but it caused a cascade of secondary complications — which I have been fighting in hospital ever since. It was a long and hard fight with many setbacks, but I was steadily, if slowly, overcoming each obstacle along the way and gradually making my way back to health,” he said. “However, recent tests have revealed that the cancer has returned. There was no sign of it as recently as a month ago, which means it is aggressive and spreading rapidly. My doctors tell me their best estimate is that I have only a few weeks left to live. This is the final verdict. My fight is over.”
Krauthammer expressed his gratitude to his caregivers, friends, family, colleagues, viewers and readers.
“I believe that the pursuit of truth and right ideas through honest debate and rigorous argument is a noble undertaking. I am grateful to have played a small role in the conversations that have helped guide this extraordinary nation’s destiny,” he said. “I leave this life with no regrets. It was a wonderful life — full and complete with the great loves and great endeavors that make it worth living. I am sad to leave, but I leave with the knowledge that I lived the life that I intended.”
“Charles has been a profound source of personal and intellectual inspiration for all of us at Fox News,” said Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman of Fox News and its parent company, 21st Century Fox. “His always principled stand on the most important issues of our time has been a guiding star in an often turbulent world, a world that has too many superficial thinkers vulnerable to the ebb and flow of fashion, and a world that, unfortunately, has only one Charles Krauthammer. His words, his ideas, his dignity and his integrity will resonate within our society and within me for many, many years to come.”
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