José Mujica is “well” after surgery to feed himself safely

SANTIAGO (AP).— Former Uruguayan President Jose Mujica, diagnosed with esophageal cancer in April, is “doing well” after undergoing surgery to ensure he can eat safely, his personal physician said Saturday.

Mujica underwent surgery with a gastrostomy to ensure that he can stay hydrated and fed, allowing the esophagus to repair itself naturally while this is going on, his doctor Raquel Pannone explained to the media.

“We are betting on keeping him better nourished, well hydrated and giving the esophagus time to complete the natural stages of recovery,” Pannone said, adding that it is not known how long this process will take.

He explained that, once this stage is over, the plan would be to return to a “normal” digestive process.

The 89-year-old former president has been hospitalized since Thursday at the Casmu hospital in Montevideo, his third admission in less than two weeks.

The doctor reiterated that the surgical procedure was carried out without complications and that Mujica is “well”, resting and “accompanied by Lucía” Topolansky (his partner), “calm and recovering”.

Pannone said earlier that Mujica was hospitalized due to digestive problems that led to dehydration and recalled that the discomfort felt by the former president was a consequence of the radiotherapy treatment he underwent to treat a malignant tumor in the esophagus, which ended up causing fibrosis.

He clarified that, although he had previously said that there are “strong convictions that the cancer has been cured,” at this time there is “clinical evidence” that it is in “a stage of remission due to the treatment.”

“We cannot yet say that the patient has been definitively cured at that time, but we do know that there is no clinical evidence that the tumor is present,” he added.

Mujica announced his own diagnosis in late April and, a week later, began treatment with daily radiotherapy sessions.

The former guerrilla was in charge of Uruguay between 2010 and 2015. He retired from the Senate and from politics in 2020, although he never stopped advocating for the causes he defends and remained active in the ranks of the leftist Frente Amplio.

His last public appearance was on August 27 at a political rally at his party headquarters, hours after he left the hospital.