Copyright Mechanicsburg Patriot News
Looking back at his recovery from a stroke during the 2022 U.S. Senate race, Sen. John Fetterman says in a new memoir that he should have withdrawn and described his debate performance as a “disaster” that fueled his growing depression. In a lengthy excerpt from “Unfettered” that’s published by The Free Press, Fetterman recalled the day in May 2022 that his wife, Gisele, noticed symptoms on the way to an event and told a state trooper to instead drive them to Lancaster General Hospital. “I am not entirely sure of the sequence, but during surgery, my heart stopped for several seconds,” he wrote. “I had this feeling of leaving; of everything inside me coming through my face, out a window, and into the sky. Then I survived.” Fetterman describes being “effectively deaf” following the stroke and then getting a pacemaker implanted a few days later. “President Biden phoned,” he writes. “I was too weak to take the call.” If his condition did not improve by Aug. 15, Fetterman promised himself to drop out of the race against Republican Mehmet Oz, but he improved, and polling showed him in a good position. Fetterman wrote that he was confident he could show voters he was not too impaired by using devices with closed captioning. “In hindsight, I should have quit,” he wrote. He also talks about enduring “vicious personal attacks” on his health from Oz, the media and social media. Specifically, Fetterman said he was mentioned 120 times on Fox News, on which he now frequently appears, in September 2022, with comments from hosts and guests ranging from “unfit to serve” to “a wax dummy” to a “stroke victim who was already crazy” to “Uncle Festerman (in an) oversize gym-rat costume.” The criticism and insults triggered depression and self-doubt, and falling poll numbers made him “desperate” by the end of September. During the Oct. 25, 2022, debate in Harrisburg, Fetterman recalled his first words being “Good night, everybody,” and it went downhill from there as he struggled to speak. “Every time I began a sentence, there was fear among supporters that I would not finish it,” he wrote. “It was a disaster.” Fetterman blamed nerves for the debate performance. “I knew this was a make-or-break moment that would determine the outcome of the election, and I had wilted,” he wrote. “I’d choked.” Reading the post-debate criticism only heightened his depression, said Fetterman. Fetterman said he was suicidal and paranoid and did not even take joy in his Senate victory that November. He wrote that he “stayed in bed” for November and December until he was sworn into office in January 2023. Once in Washington, D.C., Fetterman said he stayed in a dark apartment and slept on a “thin mattress on the floor.” By February, his depression had reached the point where Gisele told him not to come back to their home in Braddock, outside of Pittsburgh, because of the negative impact on their children. Fetterman said he moved into the basement in his parents’ York home, where he slept as a teen. In mid-February, he was admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to get treated for depression. In Walter Reed, Fetterman said he had several therapy sessions per week, read about depression, and walked through a rooftop garden, enjoying the sunshine. “After several weeks, I began to feel more alive and animated than I had in months,” he wrote. “I was present. I felt energy.” Fetterman said he hesitated when a therapist said Gisele and the kids wanted to visit, until she told him, “Children need their daddy.” With that echoing in his head, he agreed, and the family later visited a Wendy’s for lunch. “That visit to Wendy’s was the first positive interaction with my children in months,” he wrote. “No taking to my bed. No staring off. No mutual avoidance. We fell into the natural rhythm of a father with his children.” Fetterman also addresses being public about his depression and dismisses the notion that his strong support for Israel, which has caused a rift between him and many progressive Democrats, is a result of his mental health issues.
