Former US president George H.W. Bush and wife Barbara, married 72 years, are both hospitalised
Former US president George H.W. Bush was admitted Wednesday to the intensive care unit of a Houston hospital with pneumonia, and his wife of 72 years, Barbara, was hospitalised as a precaution after suffering fatigue and coughing, a spokesman said.
The 92-year-old former president, who had been hospitalised since Saturday, underwent a procedure “to protect and clear his airway that required sedation,” family spokesman Jim McGrath said in a statement.
Bush was stable and resting comfortably at Houston Methodist Hospital, where he was to stay for observation, the statement said.
The 41st president was placed in the ICU to address “an acute respiratory problem stemming from pneumonia,” McGrath said. He later said doctors were happy with how the procedure went. Bush was first admitted to the hospital for shortness of breath.
McGrath said Barbara Bush, who is 91, had not been feeling well for a couple of weeks, “and it finally just got to the point this morning where she said she wanted to take it out of committee and have the experts check it out.”
McGrath described the move as precautionary.
The Bushes, who were married January 6, 1945, have had the longest marriage of any presidential couple in American history. At the time of their wedding, he was a young naval aviator. She had been a student at Smith College.
Bush, who served as president from 1989 to 1993, has a form of Parkinson’s disease and uses a motoriz
sed scooter or a wheelchair for mobility. He was hospitalised in 2015 in Maine after falling at his summer home and breaking a bone in his neck. He was also hospitalised in Houston the previous December for about a week for shortness of breath. He spent Christmas 2012 in intensive care for a bronchitis-related cough and other issues.
Bush’s office announced earlier this month that the couple would not attend Donald Trump’s inauguration because of the former president’s age and health.
“My doctor says if I sit outside in January, it likely will put me six feet under. Same for Barbara. So I guess we’re stuck in Texas,” Bush wrote in a letter to Trump.
George Herbert Walker Bush, born June 12, 1924, in Milton, Massachusetts, also served as a congressman, CIA director and Ronald Reagan’s vice-president.
His son George W. Bush was elected president in 2000 and served two terms. Another son, Jeb, served as Florida governor and made an unsuccessful bid for the GOP nomination in 2016. Only one other US. president, John Adams, had a son who also became president.