Bill Clinton Back Home after Hospitalization from Infection, Under Care of Indian American Physician Alpesh Amin
Former President Bill Clinton, standing with former first lady and former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, shakes hands with Indian American Dr. Alpesh N. Amin and poses for a photo with staff after being discharged from University of California-Irvine Medical Center in Orange, on Oct. 17, 2021. Dr. Tony Lee is fourth from right. (Allen J. Schaben /Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Former president Bill Clinton arrived Oct. 17 at his home in New York to continue recovering from an infection that left him in treatment for six days at a Southern California hospital, officials said, according to an Associated Press report.
The former president left the University of California Irvine Medical Center around 8 a.m. with Hillary Clinton on his arm. Dressed in jeans and a sports coat and wearing a face mask, he made his way out of the hospital slowly and stopped to shake hands with doctors and nurses lined up on the sidewalk.
He gave a thumbs-up when a reporter asked how he was feeling, and he and Hillary Clinton then boarded a black SUV. They departed in a motorcade escorted by the California Highway Patrol and headed to the airport.
Bill Clinton’s “fever and white blood cell count are normalized, and he will return home to New York to finish his course of antibiotics,” Dr. Alpesh N. Amin said in a statement shared on Twitter by a Clinton spokesman.
According to a Reuters report, Amin, who had been overseeing his care at the hospital, in a statement that Clinton would finish his course of antibiotics at home in New York.
We “will continue to monitor his progress,” the Indian American doctor added in the statement released by Clinton’s spokesman.
Amin, executive director of hospital medicine at UC Irvine Health, said in a statement: “On behalf of everyone at UC Irvine Medical Center, we were honored to have treated him and will continue to monitor his progress.”
Clinton, 75, was admitted Oct. 12 to the hospital southeast of Los Angeles with an infection unrelated to COVID-19. He arrived Oct. 17 evening at his home in Chappaqua, New York, to continue his recovery.
Spokesman Angel Ureña had said Oct. 16 that Clinton would remain hospitalized until at least Sunday to receive further intravenous antibiotics. But all health indicators were “trending in the right direction,” Ureña said.
Hillary Clinton had been with her husband at the hospital and was accompanied there Saturday by daughter Chelsea.
President Joe Biden said Friday night that he had spoken to Bill Clinton, and the former president “sends his best.”
“He’s doing fine; he really is,” Biden said during remarks at the University of Connecticut.
An aide to the former president said Bill Clinton had a urological infection that spread to his bloodstream but was on the mend and never went into septic shock, a potentially life-threatening condition.
In the years since Clinton left the White House in 2001, the former president has faced health scares. In 2004, he underwent quadruple bypass surgery after experiencing prolonged chest pains and shortness of breath. He returned to the hospital for surgery for a partially collapsed lung in 2005, and in 2010 he had a pair of stents implanted in a coronary artery.
He responded by embracing a largely vegan diet that saw him lose weight and report improved health.
According to the-hospitalist.org, hospitalist Amin was born in Baroda, India, and emigrated to the U.S. before his first birthday. He graduated from Northgate High School in Walnut Creek, Calif., in 1985, and from UC San Diego with a degree in bioengineering in 1989. He obtained his MD in 1994 from Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.
By developing and nurturing the UC Irvine hospitalist program, noted the report, Amin has exhibited a deep commitment to the core missions of hospital medicine. “Our multidisciplinary program has nine different specialties managed under one program,” he said.
(With AP reports)
