A visibly-frail Bill Clinton shared an update about his recovery on Wednesday and said he will be around “for a lot longer,” after being hospitalised last week with sepsis.
The former president posted a Twitter video to his official handle on Wednesday, thanking the hospital staff for the support given to him while he was recuperating.
“Hi everyone, I was so touched by the outpouring of support I received during my stay in the hospital. Thanks so much,” said the former president.
“I’d also like to thank the doctors and nurses at UC Irvine Medical Centre for the absolutely wonderful care that they gave me over the last seven days.”
“I, for one, am going to do my best to be around, to keep doing the most good I can, for a lot longer,” he said.
An aide to the former president told the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity that Mr Clinton had a urological infection that had spread to his bloodstream. The aide said he is on the mend and never went into a septic shock. “His fever and white blood cell count are normalised and he will return home to New York to finish his course of antibiotics,” said Alpesh Amin, chair of the Department of Medicine and executive director of hospital medicine at University of California Irvine Medical Centre.
The former president also had important advice for those listening to his message: “I want to remind everyone out there: Take the time to listen to your bodies and care for yourselves. We all have work to do and each of us has an important role to play in life and in the immediate future.
The message combined gratitude with an intention to continue working. Clinton did not describe his hospital stay simply as an interruption to a busy schedule. He used the opportunity to acknowledge the people who had cared for him and the many others who had sent encouragement while he was recovering. That emphasis gave the update a personal tone beyond the formal details of a discharge announcement.
The account also distinguishes between the infection reaching his bloodstream and septic shock. The aide described an infection that had spread, while stating that Clinton had not experienced septic shock. Keeping those details together preserves the explanation given at the time and avoids replacing it with a more dramatic description than the account supports. His return home was presented as a further stage of recovery, including completion of the prescribed antibiotics.
His closing remarks returned to the ordinary responsibilities people carry in their own lives. The reminder to pay attention to the body connected his personal experience with the tendency to keep working despite signs that something needs attention. He paired that reminder with optimism about his own future, expressing a wish to remain active and useful.
For those following his recovery, the central development was his ability to address the public directly, thank the medical team, and describe his plans after leaving the hospital. The video offered reassurance in his own words while the accompanying statement supplied the limited clinical details reported by those involved in his care.
