

Chris Fox and Chris Herhalt, CP24.com





Rob Ford says he will be at city hall next month to vote on the future of the Gardiner Expressway despite being ordered to rest at home for several months after undergoing cancer surgery.

Ford underwent surgery to remove a cancerous tumour in his abdomen on May 11 at Mount Sinai Hospital and had been expected to remain in hospital for several weeks.

Instead, he headed to city hall Tuesday afternoon and told reporters "he was going crazy at home" and came to his office to "make a couple of calls and touch base with a few people."

The Ward 2 councillor and former mayor said he was released right on schedule and is "feeling better everyday," despite having to wear a protective waistband, change dressings on his wounds and maintain a drainage tube on his body as he recovers.

Ford has previously said that doctors have informed him that he will need three months to fully recover. He said he plans to return back to work on council in September but will try to make an important meeting in June where council is expected to vote on the future of the Gardiner Expressway.

"We've got to save the Gardiner," Ford said, dismissing the proposals to tear it down or build a "hybrid" expressway link between the Don Valley Parkway and the expressway. "I'll get in here (to vote) somehow," he joked.

Ford's surgery, which took place over 10 hours, followed several rounds of chemotherapy and radiation. He said he donated his tumours for research purposes.

"I've never had pain like that in my life," Ford said of the moment he came to after the surgery was finished. "It was like someone had stabbed me. I was crying like a baby."

Now that he is out of hospital, Ford said the bout with cancer taught him to "take every day as if it's your last."

"I am delighted that he is well enough to be released from hospital and I am hopeful that he will be able to get home and have the sort of peace there that you need to recover from major surgery," Mayor John Tory told reporters at city hall on Tuesday afternoon. "I hope that he will be back on the job as soon as possible."