Clinton brushes off health scare
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton says she is feeling better since falling ill at a 9/11 memorial ceremony, but she never lost consciousness and didn’t think her pneumonia diagnosis was significant enough to disclose beforehand.
‘‘I just didn’t think it was going to be that big a deal,’’ she said yesterday of the diagnosis, which she received last Saturday.
Clinton told CNN’S Anderson Cooper 360 that despite doctor’s orders to rest for five days, she thought she could ‘‘just keep going forward and power through it, and that didn’t work out so well’’.
Later, Clinton told supporters via text message and Facebook, ‘‘I’m feeling fine and getting better’’, adding: ‘‘Like anyone who’s ever been home sick from work, I’m just anxious to get back out there.’’
Clinton’s interview came as her campaign scrambled to head off lasting damage from a difficult weekend.
Aides are promising to release more of her medical records following her bout of pneumonia and conceding that they were too slow to provide information about her condition.
An outbreak of respiratory illness swept through Clinton’s campaign in the weeks before she was diagnosed with pneumonia, campaign aides said yesterday. Those who fell ill included her campaign manager, Robby Mook.
Clinton’s husband, former US president Bill Clinton, said in an interview yesterday with PBS’S Charlie Rose that she was ‘‘doing fine’’ after a good night’s sleep. He added that if there were more health problems that caused her apparent weakness, ‘‘then it’s a mystery to me and all of her doctors’’.
He said that ‘‘on more than one occasion’’ over the years ‘‘the same sort of thing’s happened to her when she got severely dehydrated’’.
Hillary Clinton told CNN that she started to feel hot at the 9/11 event on Monday, which took place on a muggy day in New York City. There was little shade where she was standing alongside other dignitaries.
As family members of 9/11 victims read the names of the nearly 3000 people killed in the 2001 attacks, she decided to leave and get a drink of water. She said she was wearing a wool suit and had been diagnosed with pneumonia, a fact her campaign had not made public.
Clinton’s doctor, Lisa R Barback, said the 68-year-old ‘‘became overheated and dehydrated’’ at the 9/11 ceremony. By the end of the day, she was ‘‘rehydrated and recovering nicely’’.
Campaign aides said it was Clinton’s decision to attend weekend fundraisers and the 9/11 ceremony despite her diagnosis.
On Monday she cancelled a California campaign swing scheduled for early this week. Her husband would headline some of her events, an aide announced yesterday.