Giuliani is being released clean bill of health
The New York Times
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December 20, 2007
Giuliani Released From Hospital After Treatment
By MICHAEL COOPER
ST. LOUIS — Rudolph W. Giuliani was released from a hospital here Thursday afternoon after coming down with what his Republican presidential campaign described as “flu-like symptoms” that led him to turn around his airplane in mid-air Wednesday night.
“Mayor Giuliani is being released from Barnes Jewish Hospital with a clean bill of health,” said Katie Levinson, his communications director.
“Doctors performed a series of precautionary tests and the results of all the tests were normal,” she said in a statement. “The mayor is heading back to New York this afternoon and he continues to be in high spirits.”
Mr. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, emerged from the hospital shortly before 3 p.m. Central time, dressed in a business suit. He waved to waiting reporters and television camera and quickly got into a car that took him away.
There are still few details about what was ailing Mr. Giuliani, what his precise symptoms were or what the prognosis is.
Mr. Giuliani was admitted to Barnes Jewish Hospital here on Wednesday night after he fell ill after spending the day campaigning across Missouri, campaign officials said. His illness became more severe after he took off for home after a fund-raiser and a news conference in Chesterfield, Mo.
“The symptoms worsened as the day wore on, and shortly after taking off from Chesterfield, Missouri, for New York the mayor became uncomfortable enough that our plane returned to the airport in Chesterfield,” Ms. Levinson said in a statement earlier Thursday. “To be on the safe side, the mayor consulted with his personal physician in New York and made the decision to go to the Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis for routine tests.”
In 2000, Mr. Giuliani dropped out of the New York Senate race against Hillary Rodham Clinton when he faced a prostate cancer diagnosis, and Mrs. Clinton went on to victory. But he has said since then that he is in good health.
Mr. Giuliani has appeared tired since Monday, when he held an unusually subdued town-hall-style meeting in Durham, N.H. But he seemed upbeat when he last faced reporters on Wednesday night outside the fund-raiser in Chesterfield.
His illness comes as his campaign has hit a rough patch. His lead in national polls has been shrinking lately, with several recent polls showing him essentially tied for first place among the Republican candidates after months in which he led more comfortably.
The Giuliani campaign is betting on an unorthodox strategy in which they are not counting on winning the first states that vote, Iowa and New Hampshire, but are instead focusing on winning the Florida primary on Jan. 29 and then trying to win a number of the big states that hold their primaries on Feb. 5.
Mr. Giuliani never had much support in Iowa, which holds its caucuses on Jan. 3. And after he failed to lift his standing in New Hampshire polls with a heavy advertising campaign there, he scaled back his efforts in order to marshal resources for later states. He spent Wednesday campaigning in Missouri, where voters go to the polls some 48 days from now.
The campaign did not immediately alert reporters who were traveling with Mr. Giuliani, but instead they said they sent a bulletin about his admission to hospital to The Associated Press at 1 a.m.
Mr. Giuliani’s hospitalization capped a day when he had unexpectedly had to drive across Missouri after his private jet broke down. “We were going to take an airplane, and when we got on the plane they said, ‘Oh, one engine just went out,’ ” Mr. Giuliani told supporters in Columbia, Mo., Wednesday afternoon after arriving a couple of hours late to his event. “We thought it was better not to take the airplane.”
Graham Bowley and Maria Newman contributed reporting from New York.