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TORONTO (AP) — Doctors have removed a cancerous tumor from former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's abdomen and he has regained consciousness after an intensive surgery that kept him under anesthesia for about 10 hours, his chief of staff said late Monday.
"There were no new growths, the cancer had not spread beyond what they were already aware of, and they were able to remove all the existing growths without causing damage to any internal structures," Dan Jacobs said in an email.
Jacobs said doctors consider the procedure to be a success.
Ford, now a city councilman, is in "some pain," Jacobs said, and still has a long recovery ahead of him.
Before the surgery, Ford said that his biggest fear was not waking up.
"I just want to wake up. That's all I want to do is wake up," he told local television station CP24 over the weekend. "Once I wake up from the surgery, then I can start dealing with it and fighting it and getting better."
Ford's surgery comes after several rounds of chemotherapy and radiation which he said shrunk his tumour to an operable size.
Ford, whose admitted drug and alcohol abuse and outrageous behavior earned him international notoriety, was forced out of his mayoral re-election bid last September when doctors discovered his rare, aggressive malignant liposarcoma. He ran successfully for his old city council seat instead.
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