A nation on tenterhooks
Thomas Fuller rightly theorised that health is not valued till sickness comes. On this note, we continue today, our discourse on the above subject. No one can or should wish PMB dead. That would not only be ungodly, unpatriotic, immoral and petty, it will also be myopic, having regard to the combustive nature of Nigeria’s fragile existentialism, going by the present scenario of the president’s second medical sojourn abroad. I, therefore, pray earnestly, as I did here earlier, that he lives, regains his vigour, effervescence and vibrancy from the frail looking president we saw at the last Friday, Jumat service, to serve out his full four-year term mandate.
World’s sick presidents
Meles Zenawi Asres, was the Prime Minister of Ethiopia from 1995 to 2012. From 1989, he was the chairman of the Tigrayan Peoples’ Liberation Front (TPLF), and the head of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) since its formation in 1991. Before becoming prime minister in 1995, he served as President of the Transitional Government of Ethiopia from 1991 to 1995.
In July, 2012, questions arose concerning Meles’ health when he did not attend African Union summit meetings in Addis Ababa. Opposition groups claimed that Meles might have already died on 16th of July, while undergoing treatment in Belgium. However, Deputy Prime Minister, Haile Mariam Desalegne, attributed Meles’ absence to a minor illness. While the government acknowledged that Meles had been hospitalised, it stated that his condition was not serious. There were further rumours of his death when he was not seen in public after the 2012 G20 summit and at the time of the death of the Head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, Abune Paulos.
On 20th of August, 2012, Meles Zenawi actually died after contracting an infection in Belgium, after leading Ethiopia for 21 years.
Zachary Taylor, was the 12th President of the United States, serving from March 1849 till July, 1850. Before his presidency, Taylor was a career officer in the United States Army, rising to the rank of major general.
On July 4, 1850, Taylor reportedly consumed copious amounts of raw fruit and iced milk while attending holiday celebrations and a fund-raising event at the Washington Monument. He later became severely ill with an unknown digestive ailment. His doctor “diagnosed the illness as “cholera morbus, a flexible mid-nineteenth-century term for intestinal ailments as diverse as diarrhea and dysentery, but not related to Asiatic cholera”. The latter was a widespread epidemic at the time of Taylor’s death.
Despite treatment, Taylor died on July 9, 1850 at 65.
Presidents that carefully hid their health status
Recently, Dr. Marc Seigel, Fox News medical correspondent, underlined the consequences of non-disclosure of health status:
“But let me tell you what the problem is: If you have a vacuum of information, guess what, pundits and even physicians tend to fill that vacuum. They tend to speculate. They tend to say – and this was going on all day Sunday – ‘It could be this! It could be that! Maybe, it’s severe! Maybe, it isn’t!’ But that’s doing the public a disservice. Because the public here has a right to know about the health of candidates for president…”
Let us analyse presidents that hid their health status.
François Mitterrand was a French politician, who was President of France, the longest in office of any French President. As leader of the Socialist Party, he was the first figure from the left elected president under the Fifth Republic. When Mitterrand came to office, he swore that he would run an open presidency. But on his first day in office in 1981, he called in the presidential physician, Dr. Claude Gubler, and told him that his prostate cancer had spread to his bones. Mitterrand solemnly declared, “We must reveal nothing. These are state secrets.” He led for 14 years with the constant and painful companion of metastatic cancer. How could that not have affected his performance in office?
Grover Cleveland (1893-1897), was an American politician and lawyer, who was the 22nd and 24th President of the United States. He won the popular vote for three presidential elections – in 1884, 1888, and1892, and was one of the two Democrats (with Woodrow Wilson), to be elected president during the era of Republican political domination. He was also the first and to date, only President in American history to serve two non-consecutive terms in office.
Cleveland was brushing his teeth one morning when he noticed a lump in the roof of his mouth. His dentist summoned a head-and-neck surgeon, who diagnosed the lump as a carcinoma of the roof of the mouth. Cleveland thought it would cause an economic crisis if the information was released that he had cancer. So, in the night, he smuggled an anesthesiologist, nurses, his dentist and the head-and-neck surgeon onto the presidential yacht, under the guise of a pleasure trip on the Hudson River. During the trip, they removed the roof of his mouth up to his left eye, and inserted a rubber prosthesis internally. People were suspicious, but it wasn’t revealed until 15 years after his death, what had happened. He suffered throughout his life time with obesity, gout, and nephritis (inflammation of the kidneys).
Ronald Reagan (1981 – 1989) was the oldest man to have sought the presidency and was considered by some to be medically unfit for the position. He struggled constantly with poor health. Reagan experienced urinary tract infections (UTIs), underwent removal of prostate stones, and suffered from temporomandibular joint disease (TMJ) and arthritis. In 1987, he had operations for prostate and skin cancers, and suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. Reagan was cheered, when he waved from his window at George Washington University Hospital. But what people did not know was that Reagan was only alert for one hour a day.
The nightly news regularly showed clips of a vigorous Reagan in good spirits. But, in fact, these moments were carefully chosen. When he went back to the White House -Bob Woodward, conveyed this vividly in his book “Veil” – he showed only brief intervals of lucidity and vigour. This was only the beginning of the Reagan presidency, but according to Woodward, his aides were afraid it would end up as a crippled presidency, like Wilson’s caretaker presidency. His wife, Nancy, was diagnosed with breast cancer and his daughter died from skin cancer.
At the age of 39, Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945), FDR experienced a severe attack of polio, resulting in total paralysis of both legs. His polio was well known – and it humanised this aristocratic man – but the press was respectful. There were only two or three pictures of him in a wheelchair. What was not so well known was the gravity of his illness when he went to the Teheran summit with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin in 1943. He came back quite ill. Cardiologist Howard Bruenn diagnosed congestive heart failure, hypertension, acute bronchitis and longstanding pulmonary disease. Vice Admiral McIntire, the White House Doctor told Bruenn, not to tell the President and his family the extent of his illness, and certainly not to tell the American public. He issued a reassuring communiqué to the effect that, for a man of his age, Roosevelt was in remarkably good health. But Franklin’s son, James Roosevelt, later said he’d never been reconciled to the fact that his father’s physicians allowed him to run for a fourth term. It was his death warrant. At the Yalta summit in 1945, Churchill’s physician said that Roosevelt looked old and drawn and sat starring ahead with his mouth open. He intervened little in the discussion. FDR funded extensive polio research, which led to the creation of its vaccine. He died shortly after the summit of a massive cerebral hemorrhage.
Presidents Who Were Sick In Office
Some US presidents were terribly sick while in office. Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921), for example, suffered a severe stroke that had him paralysed during his entire presidency, which ended in 1921. Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945), was diagnosed with Polio in 1921, at a mere 39. He served for twelve good years, could not stand or walk without support.
John F Kennedy (1961-1963) (JFK), suffered from a chronic bone disease. He was hospitalised nine times in his short two and a half year presidency, before his assassination. This was hidden from the American people. He appeared in public only with the support of others. He never disclosed the full extent of his health condition, as he used a wheel chair in private.
George Bush (1989 – 1993), during his presidency, vomited and then fainted in front of cameras in 1992, while on a visit in Japan. Dwight Eisenhower (1953 – 1961), in 1955, suffered heart attack which sent him to the hospital for several weeks. He later underwent surgery to treat Crohn’s disease in 1957, Eisenhower suffered another stroke that temporarily halted his speech. Surprisingly, he later still campaigned and won.
During the British prime minister’s second term of office from 1974-76, Harold Wilson suffered symptoms that were later diagnosed as colon cancer. He might, like Reagan, also have suffered from Alzheimer’s while in office. Neurologist Dr. Peter Garrand analyzed Wilson’s changing speech patterns and found evidence that the prime minister might well have been suffering from Alzheimer’s without knowing it.
Tony Blair as British Prime Minister in 2004, was rushed to Hammersmith Hospital in West London for emergency treatment after he complained of chest pains and an irregular heartbeat. No. 10 immediately played down the incident, but the image of the youthful prime minister (born 1953), struck down by a heart condition, sent shockwaves through the government. He was found to be suffering from supraventricular tachycardia; and the following year, was treated for a heart flutter. Blair said later. “I’ve had it for the last couple of months and it’s not impeded me doing my work and feeling fine, but it is as well to get it done.” At the time, Blair placed a great deal of emphasis on being fit and healthy. He told interviews that, at 51, he weighed about 83kg (13st), less than he did a decade before. In part, this was due to his healthy lifestyle – playing tennis regularly and insisting his aides ensure time for workouts in his daily diary.
Konstantin Chernenko (1911-1985), the fifth General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was terminally ill when he took office in February, 1984. He began smoking aged nine and continued the habit as an adult, suffering emphysema and heart failure as a result. A year before he succeeded Yuri Andropov, he had been absent for three months because of bronchitis, pleurisy and pneumonia. Despite these seeming disqualifications for office, he still managed to serve, albeit in name, as the leader of the Soviet Union for 13 months. In reality, from the end of 1984 until his collapse into a coma and death in March, 1985, he rarely left Moscow’s heavily guarded Central Clinical hospital, and when he did, he only upset the Soviet people with his cadaverous TV appearances. Chernenko was the third Soviet leader to die during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, aged 73.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965), gave the name “Black Dog” to “the prolonged fits of depression” from which he suffered”. Churchill who was clinically depressed, acknowledged in his book, “Painting as a pastime”, that he was prey to the “worry and mental overstrain [experienced] by persons who, over prolonged periods have to bear exceptional responsibilities and discharge duties upon a very large scale”. Churchill therefore took solace in whisky and cigars, especially during the darkest days of the second world war. He suffered a heart attack at the White in 1941, and contracted pneumonia a few years later. Ageing and increasingly unwell, Churchill often conducted business from his bedside. He had suffered a stroke while on holiday in 1948 and, while in office in 1953, suffered another.
To be continued