Monday morning, Senator Edward Kennedy had brain surgery in order to begin his treatment for his malignant brain tumor.

The surgery took place at Duke University Medical Center, beginning around 9 a.m. and ending 3 ½ hours later.

According to The Associated Press, a family spokeswoman said that, after the surgery, the senator told his wife, that he was feeling "like a million bucks."

The doctor who performed the surgery was Dr. Allan Friedman, the best neurosurgeon from Duke and also an internationally known surgeon, specialized in tumor and vascular surgery. Friedman said that the surgery “was successful and accomplished” their goals.

Kennedy was awake during the procedure.

The doctor also said that the senator will begin radiation and chemotherapy treatment at Massachusetts General Hospital, after a short recuperation.

The radiation and chemotherapy treatment are supposed to take care of the rest of the tumor. Not all of it has been removed, because there can remain some parts that are to dangerous to take out. That’s why the best treatment is to combine surgery with chemotherapy and radiation, said Faheem Sandhu, according to Bloomberg.

The Senator suffered a seizure in mid-May and, after being transported by an ambulance to a local hospital located near his family's Cape Cod vacation house, he was flown to Massachusetts General Hospital where doctors began running tests to determine the cause of the seizure.

The doctors diagnosed him with a brain tumor. They said that the tumor was a glioma located in the left parietal lobe of the brain.

Gliomas (primary brain tumors) start in the brain or spinal cord tissue. They can spread within the nervous system but do not spread outside the nervous system. Gliomas can be either benign (slow growing) or malignant (fast growing).