Politics & Government

Finally Cancer-Free, Fox Considers Future After Losing Primary Election

Outgoing Town Council president shares the story of his recent bout with colon cancer.

Town Council President John Fox is philosophical when considering his upset loss to Paul Carifi Jr. in the June 7 Republican primary election.

"It is what it is," he said. "At least I have my health."

That is a bigger statement than it may seem.

Fox attributes much of his defeat to the fact that he's been battling colon cancer for the past couple of years. The disease—and having his colon removed—left him weak and in "tremendous pain," caused him to lose roughly 50 pounds and made it enormously difficult for him to do his job as council president.

At one point, he was seeing a doctor who only performed procedures on Tuesdays.

"Of course, Tuesdays are the days when the council meets," Fox recalled. "Out of 110, 112 meetings, I missed 15. I couldn't go to any events because I had to be close to a bathroom. That's a reality of not having a colon. I couldn't go door to door. Everyone else [on Team Parsippany, his ticket in the primary] did, including [Republican challenger] Paul[Carifi Jr.]. I couldn't.

"It was a difficult thing," he added with a sigh, "not medically, but politically."

Medically things were challenging as well.

Fox's odyssey began with the news just after he won the GOP nomination for his first term four years ago that his wife, Mary Ann, had contracted bladder cancer.

"Oh, she had a trial," he remembered. "She went through three orthopedic surgeries and 10 rounds of chemo. Finally, she had BCG therapy. It was tough on her, but it worked."

As his wife healed, Fox received his own daunting diagnosis: colitis, followed by the news that he had cancer. His colon was removed while at Morristown Memorial Hospital, which left him incapacitated for three months.

"My daughter was getting married, and we went to the wedding in Turks and Caicos," he said. "We went for a week-long vacation. Turned out it was for a weekend. I walked my daughter down the beach and then went to bed. I was going through hell."

Fox was suffering through numerous changes in medication, and he recalled a three month period in which he ended up in Morristown Memorial's emergency room four times for irrigation treatments.

Eventually, he chose a new treatment base: Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.
 
"When I had my colon removed, the doctor was supposed to just put an ileostomy bag on me," Fox said. "For some damn reason, he never told me he went and did the whole operation."

He finally received the bag while at Mount Sinai.

"I wore that bag for 16 months. It was brutal," he said.

A surgeon told him that he would need "major, major surgery" that had a 70 percent chance of making him well again.

"Finally, someone recommended another doctor, Jeffrey Wood Milsom [a colorectal surgeon at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center], and he told me, 'I can fix this without surgery,'" Fox said. "And he did."

Instead of having to undergo another surgery, the new doctor placed a stent inside Fox's body. In time, it did the trick.

Fox is a big fan of Dr. Milsom. 

"He's a phenomenal surgeon and the most polite guy you would ever want to meet," he said, brightly. "He said I was his prize patient. I was his second stent patient. When I was well enough, they took the ileostomy bag off."

Of course, by that time, he was far behind in his quest to win re-election to the council.

"I told my colleagues (council members Michael dePierro, Vincent Ferrara and Brian Stanton) months ago that I was in trouble," Fox said. "I knew I was going to lose, I didn't work as hard as everyone else, and Paul had big financial support. Between my wife's problems and now mine, it just worked out to be terrible timing."

But he said that if there had to be a choice between politics and his health, he had to go with his health.

"Now, as it turns out, I am OK, I am fine," he said. "My wife and I both had CAT scans, and we're both clean, cancer-free."

With the election over and his current council term coming to an end in December, Fox said he is mulling over his possibilities. Of one thing he is sure.

"I'll be supporting the Team Parsippany ticket in the fall," he said. 

And one way or another, he said he will be involved in helping the community. When it is noted that sharing the story of his cancer ordeal could help people and save lives, Fox responded positively.

"That's good," he said. "I love public service."


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