Trump says first lady to leave hospital in two or three days
President Donald Trump said Tuesday that his wife, Melania, will come home from the hospital in a few days, after receiving medical treatment this week for a kidney condition the White House said is noncancerous.
“Our great First Lady is doing really well. Will be leaving hospital in 2 or 3 days. Thank you for so much love and support!” Trump tweeted.
The president and first lady also spoke by telephone Tuesday, the White House said.
Mrs. Trump, 48, underwent the “embolization” procedure Monday morning at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center outside Washington, her office announced that afternoon. The president visited her in the evening and tweeted that the procedure was “successful” and that she was in “good spirits.”
Mrs. Trump’s spokeswoman had said on Monday that the first lady was likely to remain hospitalized for “the duration of the week.”
The White House has not offered any additional information about the first lady’s condition, citing her privacy. VicePresident Mike Pence, however, described the procedure as “long planned” during a speech Monday night in Washington.
The first lady was last seen in public on Wednesday at a White House event where she and the president honoured military mothers and spouses for Mother’s Day. She later accompanied Trump to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland to welcome home three Americans who had been detained in North Korea.
Two urologists who have no personal knowledge of Mrs. Trump’s condition said the most likely explanation for the embolization procedure is a kind of noncancerous kidney tumour called an angiomyolipoma. They’re not common but tend to occur in middle-aged women and can cause problematic bleeding if they become large enough, said Dr. Keith Kowalczyk of Medstar Georgetown University Hospital.
“The treatment of choice” is to cut off the blood supply so the growth shrinks, added Dr. Lambros Stamatakis of Medstar Washington Hospital Center. Doctors do that with an embolization, meaning a catheter is snaked into the blood vessels of the kidney to find the right one and block it. Most of the time, these benign tumors are found when people undergo medical scans for another reason, but sometimes people have pain or other symptoms, Kowalczyk said. Many times, embolization patients go home the same day or the next.
The Slovenia-born former model married Trump in 2005. They have a 12-yearold son, Barron.
Mrs. Trump, who has been raising her profile as first lady, recently hosted a state dinner — her first — for the president of France. She also launched a public awareness campaign called “Be Best” to help teach kindness to children as the president sat in the audience in the Rose Garden.
The Trumps’ marriage has come under scrutiny in recent months after revelations that a porn actress was paid US$130,000 to keep quiet about claims she had sex with Trump in 2006.