WASHINGTON –US senator Edward Kennedy, who is being treated for a brain tumour, collapsed at an inaugural lunch for President Barack Obama yesterday and was brought from the room by medical staff, a congressional aide said.
“Senator Edward Kennedy experienced a seizure today while attending a luncheon for President Barack Obama in the US Capitol,” Dr Edward Aulisi, chairman of neurosurgery at Washington Hospital Center, said last night in a statement released by Mr Kennedy’s office. “After testing, we believe the incident was brought on by simple fatigue,” he said. “Senator Kennedy is awake, talking with family and friends, and feeling well. He will remain at the Washington Hospital Center overnight for observation, and will be released in the morning.”
The collapse by one of the Senate’s most respected members cast a pall over the celebrations, but within an hour Mr Obama was leading a parade down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House, and the Senate was confirming several of his cabinet nominees.
Mr Kennedy (76) was found to have a malignant brain tumour last May that required surgery. He returned to the Senate after Mr Obama’s election in November to help him pass sweeping legislation to expand healthcare.
Mr Obama said in a speech at the lunch later that his prayers were with the senator and his family. The president did not know what was happening when Mr Kennedy took ill at a table during the lunch in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall. “When he found out he rushed out,” said Senator Daniel Inouye.
Another senator with medical problems, Robert Byrd (91), of West Virginia, was sitting next to Mr Kennedy when the Massachusetts senator suffered his seizure.
Mr Byrd himself did not suffer an attack but his security decided to remove him from the lunch in his wheelchair, said the aide, Jesse Jacobs. “We were having a wonderful time telling all our Byrd stories and Kennedy was telling some of the best, but then something happened and it all stopped,” former vice-president Walter Mondale told Fox News. – (Reuters)