WASHINGTON — Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., shared positive health news on Thursday: he has completed chemotherapy treatment and received a preliminary diagnosis of being in remission from cancer.
Raskin shared the milestone in an open letter, writing that a recent body imaging scan came back negative for any discernible cancer cells.
The 60-year-old lawmaker is now in remission from diffuse large B-cell lymphoma with a 90% prognosis of no relapse, he said.
The positive development comes just four months since he first disclosed his cancer diagnosis at the end of December 2022.
Raskin shared a video from Tuesday on Twitter showing him ringing a bell at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital in Washington to mark finishing six rounds of five-day chemo sessions.
In his letter, he said he feels love and gratitude for his family, friends, constituents and thousands of people who reached out to him in recent months “with expressions of prayer, best wishes, concern, solidarity, sympathy and moral encouragement.”
He also thanked them for “beautiful gifts of bandanas, homemade scarves and sweaters, Capitol Police baseball caps, hospital scrubs, wool hats, chocolate chip cookies, mandel bread, pea soup, vegan matzoh ball soup, and gorgeous paintings, poems and letters that I will treasure forever.”
Raskin said he plans to share another thank you message soon with the American public, but said he currently lacks “the energy to properly thank you all and express the enormity of my feelings about the enduring beauty and promise of our country.”
His said his low energy level is the result of plunging hemoglobin and white blood cell counts from his final round of chemo.
When he first announced his diagnosis at the end of last year, Raskin said it was a “serious but curable form of cancer.”
It came just before the opening of the new Congress, when he was set to take over as ranking member on the House Oversight and Reform Committee, but he continued to perform his congressional responsibilities.
The Democrat received his treatment on an outpatient basis and said at the time that the prognosis for most people in his situation was excellent after four months of treatment.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
