Given his age, propensity for committing gaffes, and increasing forgetfulness, there was already plenty of talk circulating about the mental and physical health status of former Vice President Joe Biden, who is the current frontrunner among the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates.
The speculation only increased in tenor and tone after one of Biden’s eyes suddenly appeared to fill with blood during a CNN town hall event on Wednesday, something which prompted Biden to speak Friday on the campaign trail about the most significant health scare of his life — brain aneurysms that had to be surgically repaired.
Brain aneurysms
The Washington Examiner reported that Biden was introduced at the campaign event in New Hampshire by the president of the International Association of Firefighters — a union that endorsed him days after he entered the race — and used the story of his brain aneurysms as a way to praise first responders more generally.
“I ended up with what they call a cranial aneurysm,” Biden recalled. “I had to be rushed to a hospital in the middle of a snowstorm, and the fact is, the president was nice enough to offer a helicopter to get me there.”
“I couldn’t go up because of the altitude. My fire company got me down in time for [a] 13-hour operation and saved my life,” he added.
Biden was a senator from Delaware when he suffered the medical scare in 1988, one that had him so close to death that a Catholic priest had even been brought in to administer last rites, just in case.
As it turned out, the problematic blood vessel in his brain was repaired and a second aneurysm was discovered and later clipped before it could do further damage.
Blood-filled eye
Though facts about Biden’s 1988 brain aneurysms have long been public information, the topic resurfaced in recent days following the disconcerting sight of Biden’s bloody eyeball at the CNN marathon climate change town hall event on Wednesday.
In a separate report from the Examiner, it was revealed that medically speaking, Biden’s bloody eye looked far worse than it actually was. As it turned out, the blood that filled Biden’s eye was little more than the harmless aftermath of a burst or leaky blood vessel beneath his eye, a fairly common occurrence among people of all ages that can be brought about for a wide variety of reasons.
“In general, there is no reason for alarm,” Dr. Thomas Steinemann, spokesman for the American Academy of Ophthalmology, told the Examiner. “This is basically a bruise on the white part of your eye. It looks terrible but it’s truly one of those things that looks bad but for the most part is not serious. It does not hurt, it does not cause you to go blind, and it does not cause changes in vision.”
Biden’s health a real issue
But while the bloody eye may not have been as serious an issue as it might have first appeared, the same cannot be said for Biden’s increasing fogginess on the campaign trail, which has prompted plenty of questions about his cognitive capabilities and overall health.
Like it or not, Biden’s well-being will continue to be a primary subject of discussion for the duration of his run for the White House, and it won’t be the least bit surprising if his rivals for the nomination start to use his questionable health status against him.
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