Ailing ex-first lady declines treatment

HOUSTON: Former first lady Barbara Bush is in “failing health” and won’t seek additional medical treatment, a Bush family spokesperson said.

“Following a recent series of hospitalisations, and after consulting her family and doctors, Mrs Bush, now age 92, has decided not to seek additional medical treatment and will instead focus on comfort care,” spokesperson Jim McGrath said on Sunday in a news release.

McGrath did not elaborate as to the nature of Bush’s health problems. She has been treated for decades for Graves’ disease, which is a thyroid condition, had heart surgery in 2009 for a severe narrowing of her main heart valve and was hospitalised a year before that for surgery on a perforated ulcer.

“It will not surprise those who know her that Barbara Bush has been a rock in the face of her failing health, worrying not for herself – thanks to her abiding faith – but for others,” McGrath said. “She is surrounded by a family she adores and appreciates the many kind messages, and especially the prayers she is receiving.”

Bush, who is at home in Houston, is one of only two first ladies who was also the mother of a president. The other was Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams, the nation’s second president, and mother of John Quincy Adams, the sixth president.

Bush married George HW Bush on January 6, 1945. They had six children, and have been married longer than any presidential couple in American history.

Eight years after she and her husband left the White House, Mrs Bush stood with her husband as their son George W was sworn in as the 43rd president.

President Donald Trump’s press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said in a statement on Sunday evening that “the President’s and First Lady’s prayers are with all of the Bush family during this time”.

Barbara Pierce Bush was born on June 8, 1925, in Rye, New York. Her father was the publisher of McCall’s and Redbook magazines. She and George HW Bush married when she was 19 and while he was a young naval aviator. After World War II, the Bushes moved to Texas where he went into the oil business.