U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, in remarks at a tea marking Breast Cancer Awareness Month, says his mother's breast cancer was caught early and that she is doing well.

01:00 AM EDT on Saturday, October 15, 2005

BY ELIZABETH GUDRAIS
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- As a congressman, Patrick J. Kennedy always cared about funding the fight against breast cancer, he said yesterday. It's just that now it's personal.

"Breast cancer isn't a women's issue at all," the congressman said at the Rhode Island Breast Cancer Coalition's Pink Ribbon Tea, an event held at the State House each October to mark Breast Cancer Awareness Month. "In this case, it's a son's issue. For every woman that's out there that faces breast cancer, there is a whole family that faces breast cancer with her."

It was the first time Kennedy spoke publicly about his mother's recent cancer diagnosis. Joan Kennedy underwent a lumpectomy at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston on Tuesday. She was released from the hospital Wednesday, and has been at home in Boston recovering since, her son said yesterday. "She's doing well," Kennedy said. "She's in great shape."

Doctors caught Joan Kennedy's tumor early enough that she won't need chemotherapy -- just radiation -- and a full recovery is likely. Patrick Kennedy said he and his siblings "feel so lucky because it was detected so early."

It's been a difficult year for the family. In March, Joan Kennedy suffered a concussion and a broken shoulder when she fell on a Boston street corner. She had spoken publicly in the past about her alcoholism and her efforts to recover, but her children said the affliction grew worse in recent years. The Kennedy children's court petition for legal guardian status -- which resulted in lawyers and trustees overseeing Joan Kennedy's medical treatment and managing her financial affairs -- strained relations in the family, but yesterday Patrick Kennedy said taking legal action may have saved his mother's life by forcing her to have regular contact with doctors.

"If my brother and sister and I had not interceded last year the way we did . . . there's no doubt in my mind this would never have been detected until it was too late," he said.

The Rhode Island Breast Cancer Coalition honored Kennedy and U.S. Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee yesterday for their voting records on legislation relating to breast cancer. Both Chafee and Kennedy have voted with the coalition's positions 100 percent of the time during the 108th Congress.

The coalition asked legislators to support the Department of Defense Peer-Reviewed Breast Cancer Research Program; the Breast Cancer and Environmental Research Act, which would have set aside grant money for research on links between environmental factors and breast cancer; the Genetic Nondiscrimination in Health Insurance and Employment Act, which would prohibit discrimination based on genetic predisposition to disease; and the Access to Cancer Therapies Act, which was signed into law in 2003 and provides Medicare coverage for oral breast-cancer medications.

Kennedy made most of his remarks about his mother in response to questions from reporters. During the official speaking program, Kennedy held up a copy of The Providence Journal, pointed to a national news brief and took a dig at the Bush administration for proposing to relax regulations on power-plant emissions.

"My friends, we have an obligation to fight for a clean environment," Kennedy said. "There's no way you can tell me that the epidemic of breast cancer . . . is not correlated to some environmental catalyst."

The Rhode Island Breast Cancer Coalition continues its observation of Breast Cancer Awareness Month a week from today, with a speech by one of the country's foremost experts on breast cancer. Dr. Susan Love will speak about the shift in the medical world's approach to breast cancer, to prediction and prevention from diagnosis and treatment. The coalition is accepting registrations for the speech, at 1:30 p.m. at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Warwick, by phone at (401) 736-4292.