The long wait is over and Allan McFarlane is recovering from surgery.
But he and his guardian, Fay Arrold, will have to wait a few more weeks for the results of a prostate biopsy.
A political storm erupted earlier this month when The Canberra Times revealed that the 75-year-old Canberra Hospital patient had been waiting since May last year to have a kidney stent inserted and a biopsy taken as part of investigations into whether he had prostate cancer.
Mr McFarlane, who has an intellectual disability, was told last year that he almost certainly had cancer and surgery should occur within a fortnight. After becoming desperate, Miss Arrold went public about the long wait and a surgery date was scheduled.
The operation was performed on Monday and Mr McFarlane was recovering last night at Miss Arrold's home.
Miss Arrold said Mr McFarlane had not reacted well to the anaesthetic but his condition was improving.
''Today he's much, much better. He's much brighter, he's back with that big smile on his face,'' she said.
Mr McFarlane will have a follow-up specialist's appointment later this month.
Mr McFarlane volunteered at the St Vincent de Paul shop in Dickson for 21 years and his habit of dropping in on local shopkeepers for a chat earned him the nickname the ''Mayor of Dickson''.
Miss Arrold has been caring for McFarlane since 1978 when his father died.
Cowra man David Wentworth, who spoke to The Canberra Times earlier this month, also had prostate cancer-related surgery at the Canberra Hospital on Monday.
Yesterday, he said was recovering well and waiting for test results to come back.
Mr Wentworth had been scheduled as a Category 1 urgent patient, which meant he was supposed to be operated on within 30 days. But when he rang ACT Health to inquire about when surgery was, he was told that he had been downgraded to the less-urgent Category 2a.
Earlier this week, the Legislative Assembly voted to refer elective surgery and medical procedure waiting lists to the Auditor-General for investigation.
The Visiting Medical Officers Association has alleged that administrative staff in ACT Health shifted elective surgery patients to lower priority categories than the ones nominated by their surgeons.
But ACT Health has insisted that only a doctor can shift a patient from one waiting category to another.
The Canberra Times has been told by several sources that some surgeons have listed patients on the urgent elective surgery list even though they don't strictly meet the clinical criteria.
This was done to ensure that the patients did not face long waits which could lead to their conditions deteriorating.
The head of surgical services at the Canberra Hospital has complained that some surgeons have refused to downgrade patients from Category 1 even when it was clear that they did not meet the criteria.
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