By The FirstPennsylvania Senator John Fetterman made headlines this week when he was rushed to the hospital after feeling “lightheaded.” Although Fetterman’s staff has done their best to minimize his most recent incident, a profile in The New York Times suggest that the freshman Senator’s medical condition–which has been in question since he suffered a stroke back in May of 2022–may be worse than is being reported.
According to New York Times congressional correspondent Anni Karni, Senator Fetterman continues to suffer from auditory processing issues, which bedeviled him during his campaign against Republican Mehmet Oz.
“When it’s bad, Mr. Fetterman has described it as trying to make out the muffled voice of the teacher in the ‘Peanuts’ cartoon, whose words could never be deciphered,” Karni writes.
In order to deal with his condition, Fetterman reportedly carries a tablet around with him that has closed captioning capabilities so he can read what people are saying to him, and has had a closed captioning monitor installed at his desk in the Senate chamber so he can follow proceedings.
Karni also acknowledges that Fetterman’s condition may now be permanent. She writes:
The stroke — after which he had a pacemaker and defibrillator implanted — also took a less apparent but very real psychological toll on Mr. Fetterman. It has been less than a year since the stroke transformed him from someone with a large stature that suggested machismo — a central part of his political identity — into a physically altered version of himself, and he is frustrated at times that he is not yet back to the man he once was. He has had to come to terms with the fact that he may have set himself back permanently by not taking the recommended amount of rest during the campaign. (Emphasis added.)
According to the latest reports, Fetterman remains hospitalized although doctors have ruled out a second stroke.
