
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, June 1, 1990                   TAG: 9006010750
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A/6   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BALTIMORE                                LENGTH: Short

47-POUND TUMOR TAKEN OUT OF MAN

A 47-pound tumor was removed from a Pennsylvania coal miner's abdomen following unsuccessful attempts to reduce the cancerous growth through chemotherapy, hospital officials said.

The tumor was removed from Richard Moody, 47, in a five-hour operation Wednesday at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

"He's still in shock that it's gone," Moody's wife, Lilly, said Thursday.

The tumor had filled Moody's abdominal cavity and crowded his digestive tract, making it impossible for him to eat normally and leaving him bedridden for the last several weeks, she said.

The tumor was described as a schwannoma sarcoma, a slow-spreading growth that originated in nerves near Moody's right kidney. Surgeons had to remove one kidney along with the tumor, hospital officials said.

Moody was in stable condition, hospital spokeswoman Carol Pearson said. Lab results should indicate in a few days whether cancer had spread to other parts of his body. Moody's weight dropped to 130 pounds following surgery, she said.

Without surgery, the tumor would have killed him within a few weeks because of the progressive crowding of his organs, Pearson said.

by CNB