A meeting early this year with a doctor who wanted to promote a controversial piece of health-care legislation might have saved Senate Minority Leader Mike Dmitrich's life.

Dmitrich, 67, and the longest-serving lawmaker currently on the Hill, had stopped by the doctor's office on a snowy evening last January on his way back to Price to hear the pitch for a bill that, had it passed, would have forced health-care plans to let patients pick their own doctors.

The meeting went well, Dmitrich recalls, and at the end, the doctor happened to offer him a body scan — a virtual physical that images the body's internal organs so they can be checked for abnormalities sometimes overlooked by a regular check-up.

"I said, 'Let's do it.' So they did the head and the neck, and obviously there's nothing there," Dmitrich said, laughing for a moment at his joke. "Then they did the chest. . . . There's this black spot. It just showed up plain."

It was cancer, and it had to be removed right away. Within weeks after the surgery, Dmitrich — now one term away from being the longest-serving Utah legislator ever — was back on the floor of the Senate, leading his party as he has done for most of his 37 years in office.

"People keep asking" about his health, Dmitrich said. "The short answer? To my knowledge, I am cured, but they have to watch it for five years." After his operation, he was getting an X-ray every three months. His doctors decided in August he could wait six months until the next one.

About the only aspect of his life still affected is his golf game, Dmitrich said. "I started playing too early," he acknowledged. The former Carbon High School football star relegated to getting his sports fix on the golf course believes the 5 1/2-hour surgery wrecked his swing, at least temporarily.

"Plus, I lost all my strength. It's starting to come back now. My handicap went from a nine to a 13," Dmitrich said. "It really hurts" not to be as competitive on the course.

The minority leader describes himself as a semi-retired consultant to the mining industry, but he said he isn't ready to give up politics anytime soon. Chances are good the ever-competitive Dmitrich will run for at least one more term if only to break a record.

"The record for the longest-serving legislator up there is 42 years. That's (former Sen.) Haven Barlow," he said. "So I'd have to run one more time to do that." Another term would put Dmitrich at 44 years.

The coal miner's son said he's never really had too hard a time winning re-election during a political career that began when he abandoned the mines for good after his father died in a cave-in.

He'd left Utah State University and a full-ride football scholarship due to an injury, planning to work for a year in the mines. One year became three, but as sudden as the knock on his door one morning, he was done.