Former president Bill Clinton said he was back home and on the road to recovery, the first time he has been on video since he was hospitalized last week for an infection of the bloodstream.
“I’m really glad to be back home,” Clinton, 75, said in a Wednesday night video as he stood in front of the Chappaqua, N.Y., woods. “I’m doing great, enjoying this beautiful fall weather.”
Wearing a colorful sweatshirt, the former president thanked the doctors and nurses at the University of California at Irvine Medical Center for the “absolute and wonderful care they gave me over the last seven days.”
Clinton was hospitalized to receive treatment for a “non-Covid-related infection,” a spokesman said.
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A Clinton aide told The Washington Post last week that the former president had been diagnosed with a urological infection that morphed into an infection of the bloodstream, or sepsis. Clinton, however, was never in septic shock, which is a far more serious condition. While hospitalized, Clinton still had the chance to catch up with friends and watch college football, spokesman Angel Ure?a said. Former first lady and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton was photographed visiting the hospital several times during his stay there.
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By Sunday, Alpesh N. Amin, chair of the hospital’s department of medicine, said Clinton would be able to return home to New York and finish his course of antibiotics there.
In his video, the former president took a moment to remind “everyone out there to take the time to listen to your bodies and care for yourself.”
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“We all have work to do, and each of us has an important role to play in life and in the immediate future,” he said. “I, for one, am going to do my best to be around to keep doing the most that I can for a long, long time.”
Chelsea Clinton, the former president’s daughter, also took to Twitter to thank the doctors, nurses and staff at the California hospital. She said she was grateful to have her father “healthy and at home.”