Bush admitted to Houston hospital
AUSTIN (Reuters) — Former United States president George H.W. Bush was admitted to a Houston hospital for an infection that spread to his blood a day after the funeral of Barbara Bush, his wife of seven decades, a family spokesman said on Monday.
Bush, 93, was admitted to Houston Methodist Hospital on Sunday, spokesman Jim McGrath said in a statement. Bush was seen in a wheelchair on Saturday at the funeral of the former US first lady, who died last Tuesday. The two had been married for 73 years.
“He is responding to treatments and appears to be recovering,” McGrath said in a statement.
Bush, the country’s oldest living ex-president, served a single term in the Oval Office from 1989 to 1993.
A year ago this month, the 41st US president spent two weeks in the same hospital for treatment of pneumonia and chronic bronchitis, a constant irritation of the lining of tubes that carry air to one’s lungs, McGrath said at the time. His doctors said chronic bronchitis is a condition more prevalent with age and can aggravate the symptoms of pneumonia.
Bush was also hospitalized for 16 days in January 2017 for pneumonia. During that hospital stay, which included time in intensive care, doctors inserted a breathing tube and connected him to a ventilator.
In 2015, he was admitted to a hospital in Maine after falling at home and breaking a bone in his neck, and in December 2014 for about a week for shortness of breath.
He spent Christmas 2012 in intensive care for a bronchitis-related cough and other issues.