"He has had no further seizures, remains in good overall condition and is up and walking around the hospital," said a joint statement by Dr. Lee Schwamm, vice chairman of the Department of Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Dr. Larry Ronan, Kennedy's primary care physician.

Some outside experts gave him no more than three years — and perhaps far less.

"As a general rule, at 76, without the ability to do a surgical resection, as kind of a ballpark figure you're probably looking at a survival of less than a year," Dr. Keith Black, chairman of neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, told The Associated Press.

The diagnosis shocked the state which he has represented since 1962 after his brother John F. Kennedy left the Senate upon his election to the presidency.

State Rep. Harriett Stanley, D-West Newbury, a brain tumor survivor herself, described the news as "eerie."

"There's a real feeling of 'deja vu' today," Stanley said. Seven years ago this month, during an MRI at Mass General, doctors found a tumor on the back, right side of Stanley's brain.

"Mine was benign while his is malignant, which is significantly different," Stanley said. "It's not news that anyone wants to hear in their lifetime."