Diary Entry - 07/18/1985
Key Facts
President Reagan meets with Assistant for National Security Affairs Robert McFarlane to discuss relations with Iran and the Soviet Union.
President Reagan has the last of his medical tubes removed while recovering from colon cancer surgery at Bethesda Naval Hospital.
A good nights sleep until about 5:15 A.M. when I had a bathroom call. What a morning—the Dr. (Oller) took the metal clips out of my incision—what an improvement that made. Then I had a light breakfast and he told me he’d take the feeding tube out before lunch & he did. Such a feeling of freedom—no more tubes harnessing me to the machinery.
Nancy & I had lunch. I find I can only eat a few mouthfuls. A lot of cards & messages to look at. Then around 4:30 P.M. a wave out the window to the press and down to X-Ray.
Bud came by—it seems 2 members of the Iranian govt. want to establish talks with us. I’m sending Bud to meet with them in a neutral country. Gorbachev has passed the word he’d like to establish a private channel of communications. We tried to get such a thing with his predecessors & couldn’t make it. I gave the word to proceed.
I watched a T.V. press roundtable on their handling of my “illness.” I detected an effort on the part of some—particularly Helen Thomas to use the term “The President has Cancer.” My Dr.’s said use of the present tense is a mis-statement. “The President had Cancer—it has been removed.”
