BOSTON
Conservative political commentator Robert Novak said yesterday that he has a brain tumor, less than a week after he hit a pedestrian with his Corvette and drove away.
Novak, 77, fell ill on Cape Cod this weekend while visiting his daughter and was taken to Brigham and Women's Hospital, where he said that the tumor was found on Sunday.
"I will be suspending my journalistic work for an indefinite but, God willing, not too lengthy period," Novak, the editor of the Evans-Novak Political Report, said in the statement released by Eagle Publishing.
Novak has been a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times for years. His assistant, Kathleen Connolly, told the newspaper that doctors had not yet done a biopsy to determine if the tumor is malignant.
She said that Novak was alert and talking in the intensive-care unit. Novak's office declined to comment further.
Hospital spokesman Kevin Myron confirmed that Novak was a patient but said that Novak requested that no further information be released.
Last week, Novak was given a $50 citation after he hit a homeless man with his Corvette in downtown Washington. Novak kept going until he was stopped by a bicyclist, who said that the man was splayed on Novak's windshield.
Dr. Lynne Taylor, a neuro-oncologist at Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, said that hospital residents are taught to check for brain tumors in patients who report having a recent car accident in which they did not realize that they had hit something.
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