Waltham's State Senator: Cancer Won't Stop Me

WALTHAM, MA — A State Senator who represents Waltham announced he plans to fight the rare - but curable - form of leukemia that he was diagnosed with Monday. He'll also still run for reelection, he said

State Sen. Michael Barrett, a Democrat from Lexington, issued a statement Tuesday announcing his diagnosis with the form of leukemia known as APL.

“Late yesterday, doctors at Mass. General Hospital diagnosed me with APL, a rare form of leukemia. Fortunately for me, APL is highly curable," Barrett said in the statement.

The senator said he would be in the hospital for 30 days during treatment and then continue with treatment as an outpatient.

“Throughout, I’ll continue to pursue the legislative and district priorities of my constituents. In terms of politics, for me nothing will change," he said.

Barrett said because of complications to treatment he would be having to work from home.

“This past week, before I had a diagnosis and knew what to call my condition, I kept up contact with people and got work done via laptop, email, and cell phone. Unfortunately, my docs will not let me hop out of bed at Mass. General and head up Beacon Hill to vote in a packed chamber," he said.

The senator said with the help of his staff, he expected to continue to advance his legislative agenda effectively throughout his convalescence, and to resume my duties in full once he was better.

Barrett came to Beacon Hill as a state representative in 1979 from Reading. In 1984 he made a bid for Congress, but failed, the Boston Globe reported.

He returned to Beacon Hill for a stint in the Senate from 1987 to 1994, representing another district (Cambridge, Belmont, Watertown and the Allston-Brighton neighborhood of Boston). In 1994 he ran for Governor of Massachusetts, but lost in the primaries to Democrat Mark Roosevelt (who ended up losing to Bill Weld). He became the CEO and General Counsel of the Visiting Nurse Associations of New England, a large home health care provider network. Then worked as a health care consultant before returning in 2013 to the Senate from Lexington.

Barrett represents the Third Middlesex District. The district includes Waltham and the towns of Bedford, Carlisle, Chelmsford, Concord, Lexington, precincts 3, 8 and 9, Lincoln, Sudbury, precincts 1, 4 and 5, and Weston in Middlesex County.

(For more information on this and other neighborhood stories, subscribe to Waltham Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

Photo courtesy Barrett.