Former President George H.W. Bush has been admitted to the
intensive care unit at a Houston hospital "following a series of setbacks
including a persistent fever," but he is alert and talking to medical
staff, his spokesman said Wednesday.
Jim McGrath, Bush's spokesman in
Houston, said in a brief email that Bush was admitted to the ICU at Methodist
Hospital on Sunday. He said doctors are cautiously optimistic about his
treatment and that the former president "remains in guarded
condition."
No other details were released about
his medical condition, but McGrath said Bush is surrounded by family, reports
The Associated Press.
The 88-year-old has been hospitalized
since November 23, when he was admitted for a lingering cough related to
bronchitis after having been in and out of the hospital for complications
related to the illness.
Earlier Wednesday, McGrath said a
fever that kept Bush in the hospital over Christmas had gotten worse and that
doctors had put him on a liquids-only diet.
"It's an elevated fever, so it's
actually gone up in the last day or two," McGrath told The Associated
Press. "It's a stubborn fever that won't go away."
But he said the cough that initially
brought Bush to the hospital has improved.
Bush, the oldest former U.S.
president, was visited on Christmas by his wife, Barbara, his son, Neil, and
Neil's wife, Maria, and a grandson, McGrath said. Bush's daughter, Dorothy, was
expected to arrive Wednesday in Houston from Bethesda, Md. The 41st president
has also been visited twice by his sons, George W. Bush, the 43rd president,
and Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida.
Bush and his wife live in Houston
during the winter and spend their summers at a home in Kennebunkport, Maine.
The former president was a naval
aviator in World War II — at one point the youngest in the Navy — and was shot
down over the Pacific. He achieved notoriety in retirement for skydiving on at
least three of his birthdays since leaving the White House in 1992.
AP
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