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With five hours until last month’s vote, John Feterman’s campaign in the Pennsylvania Senate issued a confusing statement about the first day: He will undergo surgery before polls close to install a defibrillator pacemaker after his recent stroke.
“This should be a short procedure that will help protect his heart and address the root cause of his stroke, atrial fibrillation (A-fib), by regulating his heart rate and rhythm,” the unsigned statement said. May.
This sentence, which campaign advisers say was approved by the hospital, raised more questions than it answered. Although pacemakers are sometimes used to treat patients with A-fib – an irregular heartbeat caused by the upper chambers of the heart – devices that include defibrillators are not usually.
“You would never use a defibrillator to treat atrial fibrillation,” said Christian Thomas Ruff, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and director of general cardiology at Brigham and Boston Women’s Hospital. “The defibrillator is used to treat dangerous heart rhythms from the lower ventricles.”
Feterman’s campaign will take 17 days to explain the inconsistency. A letter from his cardiologist, released Friday, said the defibrillator was installed to treat an undiscovered cardiomyopathy, first diagnosed in 2017, which reduces the amount of blood his heart can pump.
The fact that the 52-year-old Feterman and his campaign won the nomination without fully revealing the extent of his physical illness has raised concerns among Democrats that there may be more bad news that potentially threatens the party’s hopes of retaining control in the Senate this fall. The politician, whose advisers portrayed him as an “authentic, outspoken, non-BS populist” – wearing shaved pate, a gray goatee and Carhartt’s sweatshirts – now faces the challenge of explaining voter confusion.
Feterman, who is currently the vice-governor of Pennsylvania, responded Friday with a more extensive written statement, saying he had “nearly died” of a stroke, had not yet fully recovered and had seen the mistake of not taking prescribed heart medication. its condition, starting in 2017
“I did not do what the doctor told me,” he wrote. “But I won’t make that mistake again.”
Feterman says he “almost died” after ignoring heart disease
His campaign advisers say they have worked to be as transparent as possible. According to one adviser, Feterman’s campaign only found out about the operation in the morning of the primary, and doctors never mentioned the individual heart disease at the time. Doctors describe the defibrillator as “an insurance policy,” the councilor said.
Speakers at Lancaster General Hospital did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
“We don’t have doctors on our campaign team,” said Rebecca Kirchner Katz, Feterman’s senior campaign adviser. “We learn about these conditions and explain them in real time.”
Concerns have been heightened by the progress of his recovery from a stroke after his wife, Gisele, described his election night as a “little hiccup” and predicted that her husband would be back on his feet “in no time.” The campaign adviser said the stroke was serious and that Feterman had avoided serious consequences largely due to his wife’s early intervention and his proximity to Lancaster Hospital, where he received immediate treatment.
His physical well-being has improved since the stroke.
“He walks a few miles every day,” Katz said.
However, he has not yet appeared in public, and his video appearances released by the campaign show him speaking only a few sentences at a time. His ability to have quick conversations has not fully recovered, although he is improving and doctors are still predicting a full recovery.
Two Democratic political advisers – who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations and a sensitive issue – worried that the campaign’s attitude toward Feterman’s health would undermine his image as outright.
“When you are the godfather of transparency and social media and you get dark, people notice,” said a strategist who has long supported Fireman. “It’s not like recognizing a health problem would immediately make people look for a replacement.”
Another Democrat consultant, who did not work for any Senate primary candidate, said disclosure of campaign information was “opaque” at best and “misleading” at worst, which led to let your imagination run wild ”. Feterman will face Republican candidate Mehmet Oz, a retired cardiothoracic surgeon and television personality.
“There were so many red flags” in the days after Feterman’s stroke, the consultant said, adding later: “If Oz and the Republicans wanted to get to [health] the problem is circumvented, they would do it through the problem of trust. “
Republicans have already jumped on the subject. “Wow, @JohnFetterman is starting his campaign for the Senate by lying about his health,” tweeted Chris Hartline, communications director of the National Republican Senatorial Commission.
David McCormick loses to Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania Senate Republican primary
“While John Fetterman has won the trust of the Pennsylvania, Mehmet Oz is a fraud who will do, say and sell everything to help himself,” said David Bergstein, communications director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
Pennsylvania is the main Senate race in the midterm election cycle, giving Democrats the clearest opportunity to take their seat following the upcoming retirement of Senator Patrick J. Tumi (R-Pa.). Putting aside his health challenges, Feterman’s campaign has a strong start, winning each of the 67 Pennsylvania counties in the recent Democratic four-way primary, with Connor Lamb (D-Pa.) Coming in a distant second. In 33 constituencies, his share of the vote was 70 percent or more, according to the campaign.
Former mayor of the small town of Braddock, Pennsylvania, Feterman has made a name for himself as a politician who can attract support outside his party’s brand, with outspoken calls for legalizing marijuana for entertainment, revitalizing manufacturing communities and eliminating Senate filibuster. more done.
People close to Feterman say one of the problems in his campaign is his inconvenience of talking about his own health problems or taking care of them properly, something the candidate acknowledged in a statement Friday.
“Like so many others and especially many men, I avoided going to the doctor even though I knew I wasn’t feeling well,” he said.
That was a message some Democrats hope voters will like, which Feterman hopes will reach in November.
“Would you like to see more information coming out of the campaign faster?” Yes. But in the end, you know, I don’t think it’s indicative of the type of campaign [Fetterman] is running, “said Democrat consultant Mike Mikus, who voted for Lamb in the primary. He said Feterman seemed “connected” to Friday’s confession that he had forgotten to take his medicine and had neglected his doctor.
“He is recovering well and following the doctor’s instructions. I look forward to following in the footsteps of the campaign with him soon, “said Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (D-Pa.) In a statement after speaking at Zoom with Feterman on Friday. “I’m not sure I’ve seen a candidate in recent history who is better prepared to serve the people of Pennsylvania.
Ramesh Chandra of Alliance Cardiology said in a statement on Friday that he saw Feterman in 2017 after experiencing swelling in his legs. “I diagnosed him with atrial fibrillation, irregular heartbeat, along with a reduced heart rate,” he wrote in the letter.
Feterman – who is 6 feet 8 inches tall – previously announced that since 2017 he has changed his diet and started exercising more regularly, leading to significant weight loss. A June 2018 article by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported that he had lost 148 pounds in one year, coming down from a peak of about 418 pounds.
“I was fat,” Feterman said at the time. “It’s awkward to talk about.”
Several cardiologists said the description of a “reduced heart pump” coincided with the diagnosis of cardiomyopathy, which Chandra said was why Lancaster doctors decided to implant a pacemaker with a defibrillator. Cardiomyopathy is a disease of the heart muscle that makes it difficult for the body to deliver blood to the body, which sometimes leads to swelling of the legs.
“There are two main reasons to implant defibrillators,” said Matthew Tommy, an assistant professor of medicine and cardiology at Icahn School of Medicine in Mount Sinai. “One is for someone who has already suffered a cardiac arrest. The other reason is primary prevention for people who have never had cardiac arrest but have risk factors.
Tommy said the latest pharmaceutical innovations have made cardiomyopathy a much more manageable condition than it was 10 or 20 years ago. Treatment is usually determined by a series of tests, including measuring the ejection fraction pumped from the left ventricle and a CHA2DS2-VASc score that takes into account age, diabetes, hypertension, vascular disease and other factors.
Feterman’s campaign did not publish this data.
“The prognosis I can make for John’s heart is this: if he takes his medication, eats healthily and exercises, he will be fine,” Chandra said in a statement. “[H]He should be able to campaign and serve in the US Senate without a problem. “
Annie Linsky contributed to this report.
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