Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), who suffered a debilitating stroke in May of last year, was rushed to a hospital on Wednesday after he complained of feeling “lightheaded” at a Senate Democrat retreat event, Breitbart reported.
It was later confirmed that the Pennsylvania senator had not suffered another stroke, but the incident sparked a resurgence in the legitimate concerns about Fetterman’s health as well as his ability to actually do the job that he was elected to do.
No evidence of another stroke or seizure
Shortly after Sen. Fetterman was admitted to George Washington University Hospital in Washington D.C. on Wednesday, the senator’s communications director Joe Calvello announced that initial tests suggested that Fetterman had not suffered another stroke, according to Breitbart.
He would be kept at the hospital overnight to be monitored and undergo more tests, but Calvello said at that time that his boss was “in good spirits and talking with his staff and family.”
Calvello, who also describes himself as Fetterman’s “consigliere,” provided an update on the Democratic freshman senator’s health status on Thursday, and though he would remain hospitalized, the prognosis was nonetheless good.
“About an hour ago Sen. Fetterman received the results of his MRI. According to John’s doctors at The George Washington University Hospital, the results of the MRI, along with the results of all of the other tests the doctors ran, rule out a new stroke,” the top staffer revealed in a pair of tweets.
He added, “John is being monitored with an EEG for signs of seizure — so far there are no signs of seizure, but he is still being monitored. Our team will continue to provide information as it comes in and we will have more updates as we get them.”
Released from the hospital on Friday
Sen. Fetterman must have shown sufficient signs that his health had improved during the multi-day hospital stay, as The Hill reported that he was cleared to be released from the hospital on Friday and was set to return to work in the Senate in the coming week.
Such was the news shared by Calvello in a tweet posted in the late afternoon on Friday, in which he wrote, “A few minutes ago, Senator Fetterman was discharged from the hospital.”
“In addition to the CT, CTA and MRI tests ruling out a stroke, his EEG test results came back normal, with no evidence of seizures. John is looking forward to returning to the Senate on Monday,” the communications director added.
Fetterman’s rushed recovery may have “permanently” damaged his health
To be sure, it is excellent news that Sen. Fetterman did not suffer another stroke or seizure and has been released from the hospital, but that doesn’t change the fact that many Americans firmly believe that the senator, who nearly died from the May 2022 stroke, should have been withdrawn from the race and never should have been selected to serve in the Senate.
That argument was bolstered by The New York Times in a surprisingly revelatory article on Friday, prior to Fetterman’s release from the hospital, that detailed his struggles to adapt to the chaotic and highly stressful environment of the Senate amid his ongoing and rushed recovery from the near-fatal stroke less than a year earlier, despite plenty of accommodations being made for him.
That includes the use of special talk-to-text closed captioning technology that helps Fetterman understand what other people are saying, given that he now suffers from an auditory “neurological condition” as a result of the stroke that, in the senator’s own words, has made everyone’s voices sound similar to the indecipherable “wah wah” speech of Charlie Brown’s teacher in the “Peanuts” cartoon.
Per The Times, Fetterman “is frustrated at times that he is not yet back to the man he once was. He has had to come to terms with the fact that he may have set himself back permanently by not taking the recommended amount of rest during the campaign. And he continues to push himself in ways that people close to him worry are detrimental.”
