U.S. Representative announces diagnosis of terminal lung cancer

INDIANAPOLIS – U.S. Rep. Julia Carson told a newspaper she has terminal lung cancer but did not say whether she intends to return to Congress or seek a seventh term.\nCarson, 69, said in a statement published in The Indianapolis Star on Sunday that she had planned to return to Washington after recuperating from a leg infection before a doctor diagnosed her with cancer.\n“It had gone into remission years before, but it was back with a terminal vengeance,” the six-term Indianapolis Democrat said in the statement, which did not disclose the date of her initial diagnosis.\nCarson made no comment beyond the statement she issued to the newspaper. The Associated Press left a phone message at Carson’s Washington office seeking additional comment from her spokesman, Chad Chitwood.\nAnn DeLaney, a former Democratic Party state chairwoman, told The Star that Carson’s health appeared to have been suffering over the past year.\n“Frankly, any of us who had seen her in the last year thought there was something pretty seriously wrong with her,” DeLaney said.\nCarson has been away from Washington since she was admitted to an Indianapolis hospital Sept. 21 for treatment of a deep leg infection. Her office had said Carson intended to return to Congress by mid-December, but that was before “the second shoe fell – heavily,” her statement said.\nCarson has not made her plans for another term clear. She has said she intended to seek re-election. But she also declined to give a yes or no answer when asked during a recent radio interview if she planned to run.\nHer statement did not refer to her political plans, but Carson has been largely undeterred by health problems in the past.\nMost recently, she was hospitalized for more than a week for what her office said was an infection near where a leg vein was removed in January 1997 when she underwent double heart bypass surgery – weeks after she was first elected to Congress.\nCarson also has suffered from high blood pressure, asthma and diabetes and took a one-week leave of absence from her congressional duties in 2003 for what she called routine medical appointments.\nShe missed dozens of House votes in 2004 because of illness and spent the weekend before the 2004 election in the hospital for what she said was a flu shot reaction – but still won re-election by 10 percentage points.\nDespite health problems that have led to missed votes and GOP claims that she was ineffective, Carson has won more than two dozen consecutive elections at the local, state and national levels since 1972.