Argentine President Dodges the "Big C"

So, you met my husband?

Argentina's Fernandez sent home, never had cancer

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez never had cancer despite being diagnosed with the disease last month and having her thyroid gland removed on January 4, her spokesman said on Saturday.

The government announced just after Christmas that the recently re-elected leader had thyroid cancer.

"You go left, I'll go Right"

The operation to remove the gland went well, but when it was later analyzed it turned out to have never contained cancerous cells, said spokesman Alfredo Scoccimaro.

"The original diagnosis has been modified," he told a news conference. "The presence of cancer cells was discarded."

Fernandez was originally diagnosed with papillary carcinoma.

"And they say you can't fool all the people all of the time!"

Well, you can live without a thyroid, these days, thanks to synthetic thyroid hormone.

Buenos Aires-based thyroid cancer expert Eduardo Faure, who is not on the president's medical team, said a small number of such cases turn out to be "false positives," meaning that no cancer is present.

"The cells may originally appear to be cancer but in 2 percent of cases, after the operation, when a more thorough examination can be performed, it turns out they are not," the doctor said in an interview.

"I wish people would stop making that comparison!"

Christina gained the presidency of of Argentina after her husband Nestor de Kirchner retired from the position in 2007.  I'm pleased that despite our many political foibles, the U.S. has never adopted the Argentinian practices of elevating first ladies to the presidency after their husband either ages out of office or dies.  I hope we're not going to start now.