When Senator Fetterman was in the Senate: ”My depression is in remission” after he suffered a severe stroke
Ever since he suffered a severe stroke during his Senate campaign last year, Fetterman has had to answer questions about his health. Still, the former Lt. Gov of Pennsylvania defeated Trump-endorsed celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz in November for the first open Senate seat in the state in a dozen years. His victory helped solidify the control of the Senate for the Democrats.
Fetterman remembers a time when he did not want to talk about depression. The senator from Pennsylvania returned to the senate this week after taking leave to seek treatment for clinical depression.
It wasn’t hard to picture a big smile. I’ve really missed being here. I was not the kind of Senator that people in Pennsylvania deserved, when I was depressed. I didn’t have a good relationship with my spouse, Gisele, or my children, Karl, Grace, and August.
‘John, we believe your depression is in remission.’ I initially didn’t think that was true. and I was just blown away. And, now, my depression is in remission. And that’s why coming back home and coming back to the Senate, and to coming back to being in the gym, being a member of the general public, has been a joy.
I didn’t realize that I was depressed. I didn’t even understand it. This, to me, just became the new normal. I wasn’t aware that I wasn’t eating. I didn’t realize I wasn’t drinking a lot.
I dropped 25 pounds. I would say things that were incoherent. I would get discouraged and lost when I went to Washington.
What did you decide to do when I was diagnosed with depression? (I apologized to the editor of the article “Why I didn’t want to do this” [in the New York Times])
I needed to take this option once it was decided that I needed to do so. I realized that I knew something was wrong. They knew that I wasn’t right. I pushed back as well, sometimes saying ‘Are you sure, I don’t really need it’. Because then when it really comes to that choice, I’m gonna walk in here and sign myself in, I thought for a second ‘ oh my god no, no, wait a minute. I’m fine. I will never mind, I got this.
I’m honored to have the ability to try to pay it forward, because I was blessed in my opportunities. I want to tell you the things that got me into action. And I would tell anybody listening to this interview, if you suffer from depression, or you have a loved one, please let them know that you don’t need to just suffer with that depression. Get help and treatment. If I’d had done that years ago, I would not have had to put my family and myself and my colleagues [through] that if I had gotten help.
You have the chance to get rid of it if you suffer from it. And I didn’t believe it. But right now I’m the guy that didn’t believe that I could get rid of my depression. And now I did.
John Fetterman Wants to Pay it Forward By Speaking Openly About His Depression: A New Senator Trying to Win by Wearing a Hearing Aid
When he was in the hospital he wondered if his family wouldn’t have been affected and if he would have done something about it before.
Now that I’m back, I want people to know that there is a way to get better, if you have any of these feelings.
“I can’t tell you how moving it was to me,” Fetterman said. If it had been cold, I would have been destroyed, but I’m so grateful to our colleagues and to Leader Chuck Schumer.
He said that a few of his Senate colleagues visited him while he was being treated at Walter Reed.
Fetterman sat down with Detrow in his Capitol Hill office, a windowless space that his team has decorated with posters of Philadelphia sports mascots Gritty and the Phanatic. The freshman senator — who recently learned that he can vote without wearing a suit — was wearing his signature Carhartt hoodie and grey gym shorts. He was also sporting brand-new hearing aids and using closed captioning to help process speech.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/20/1171052245/john-fetterman-wants-to-pay-it-forward-by-speaking-openly-about-his-depression
“When did we lose? What did we learn?” Karl said in a conversation about his stroke and the traumatic experience he had with his father
He said that he felt lost after he won. “I wasn’t elated. I wasn’t happy about it. I was relieved that it was over. But at the same time, I never had the opportunity to recover from the stroke, and I had depression, and a lot of just the stress and everything. I wasn’t able to address it.
He said that he always gets emotional when thinking about it. I didn’t think about it when I was 14 years old.
“My oldest son had a conversation where he was having a hard time understanding — ‘why, Dad, why are you depressed? You know that you ran and won. I tried to explain to Karl that I had a stroke, and everything, but he didn’t feel like we were enough. he remembered through tears. “Aren’t we enough?’”