Former first lady
Barbara Bush is in “failing health,” according to a family spokesperson, and won't seek additional medical treatment.
HOUSTON — Former first lady Barbara Bush is in “failing health” and won’t seek additional medical treatment, a Bush family spokesman said Sunday.
“Following a recent series of hospitalizations, 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,” spokesman Jim McGrath said in a news release.
McGrath did not elaborate on the nature of Bush’s health problems. She has been treated for decades for Graves’ disease, a thyroid condition.
“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 is one of only two first ladies who was also the mother of a president. The other was Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams and mother of John Quincy Adams.
She married George H.W. Bush in 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 president.
She’s known for her white hair and her triplestrand fake pearl necklace.
Her 94-year-old husband also has had health issues in recent years.
In April 2017, the nation’s 41st president was hospitalized in Houston for two weeks for a mild case of pneumonia and chronic bronchitis. He was hospitalized months earlier, also for pneumonia, and spent time in 2015 at a hospital in Maine, where he and his wife have a summer home in Kennebunkport, after falling and breaking a bone in his neck. In Houston in December 2014, he was treated for shortness of breath and spent Christmas 2012 in intensive care for a bronchitis-related cough and other issues.
Bush has a form of Parkinson’s disease and uses a motorized scooter or a wheelchair for mobility. He also served as a congressman, CIA director and Ronald Reagan’s vice president.