HILLARY CLINTON has been released from a New York hospital on Wednesday, three days after doctors discovered a blood clot in her head.
The US Secretary of State’s medical team advised her last night that she was making good progress on all fronts and said they are confident she will fully recover, said Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines.
Doctors had been treating Clinton with blood thinners to dissolve a clot in a vein that runs through the space between the brain and the skull behind the right ear.
“She’s eager to get back to the office,” Reines said in a statement, adding that the secretary and her family were grateful for the excellent care she received at New York-Presbyterian Hospital.
Reines said details of when Clinton will return to work will be clarified in the coming days.
Clinton had been in the hospital since Sunday, when doctors discovered the clot on an MRI test during a follow-up exam stemming from a concussion she suffered earlier in December.
While at home battling a stomach virus – picked up during a tour of Europe that included an OSCE conference in Dublin – Clinton had fainted, fallen and struck her head.
“Grateful my Mom discharged from the hospital and is heading home,” the secretary’s daughter, Chelsea, wrote on Twitter. “Even more grateful her medical team [is] confident she’ll make a full recovery.”
The State Department yesterday said Clinton had been speaking by telephone with staff in Washington and reviewing paperwork while in the hospital.
“She’s been quite active on the phone with all of us,” said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.
Before being released from the hospital, Clinton was photographed getting into a black van with her husband Bill, Chelsea and a security contingent to be taken elsewhere on the sprawling hospital campus.
The last time Clinton had been seen publicly was on December 7, when she met Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness in Belfast.
Clinton’s physicians had said this week that there was no neurological damage but that they planned to keep her in the hospital while they established the proper dose for the blood thinners. They said Clinton, 65, had been in good spirits and was engaging with doctors, family and aides.
Sidelined by her illness for most of December, Clinton was absent on December 21 when President Barack Obama nominated Senator John Kerry to succeed her when she steps down at the start of Obama’s second term on January 20, as had long been planned.
Her illness also forced to cancel scheduled testimony before Congress about a scathing report into the attack on the US diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, although she could still testify in the future.
“She has said that she is open” to going before Congress, Nuland said yesterday, while Clinton was still hospitalised. “We are working with them now on their schedule, because there’s also a question of when they are going to be in.”
Clinton had expected to return to work this week and had already started to resume regular phone contact with her foreign counterparts.
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