Bowtie boy Tucker Carlson's website The Daily Caller has the scoop:
Stress-related condition ‘incapacitates’ Bachmann; heavy pill use alleged
In late July 2010, Rep. Michele Bachmann’s then-communications director, Dave Dziok, told his boss that he planned to take a new job with the public relations firm Edelman.
Dziok had worked for Bachmann for two and a half years, a relatively long period by the standards of her office, and was leaving on good terms.
Staff turnover can frustrate any employer, but Bachmann responded more dramatically. Dziok’s departure triggered a debilitating medical episode that landed the congresswoman in urgent care.
“Within 24 hours she was in the hospital,” a former aide says.
Bachmann was admitted to a Washington, D.C. hospital on Friday, July 30, and released that same day. She flew home to Minnesota to recuperate, missing a scheduled campaign event with Sen. Roy Blunt.
It’s “nothing folks should worry about going forward,” Dziok told reporters at the time, refusing to specify why Bachmann had been hospitalized.
It was, according to three people who have worked closely with Bachmann, not an isolated event. (Bachmann signs ‘Cut, Cap, and Balance’ pledge, adds promise to defund Obamacare)
The Minnesota Republican frequently suffers from stress-induced medical episodes that she has characterized as severe headaches. These episodes, say witnesses, occur once a week on average and can “incapacitate” her for days at time. On at least three occasions, Bachmann has landed in the hospital as a result.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/...
In a different era, this type of incapacitation would go unreported.
A stroke incapacitated Wilson at the end of 1919, leaving the executive branch nearly rudderless during his last year in office. Diagnosed with high blood pressure in 1906, the stress of the presidency finally wore him down. The stroke increased his stubbornness, and he refused to allow the cabinet to meet without him (the cabinet would not meet at all for seven months). Most of the business of the presidency was funneled through Edith Wilson who insulated him from anything that might excite him.
http://www.documentaryfilms.net/...
Eleanor Roosevelt also had to cover for the diminished capacity of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as his health began to deteriorate beginning when he contracted near-fatal polio in 1921 at age 39:
"...the president’s health did have an effect on his work capacity. “When he was confronting a big, demanding issue like Yalta,” Burns adds, “he was at top form. With many other lesser issues, he was either not involved or simply did not have the patience and the time to give them as much as he would have given earlier.
If leadership is the devil in the details—meaning that you do deal with the smaller stuff—then Roosevelt was not giving leadership in that sense.” Historian Robert H. Ferrell points out that FDR’s diminished stamina during his final year caused him to give short shrift to a host of issues, some of them not small stuff; he counts among them war strategy decisions in the Pacific theater, requests for American support from Vietnamese nationalist Ho Chi Minh, the Jewish Holocaust in Europe, and the urgent need for Vice President Harry Truman to receive some preparation for the possibility of unexpectedly assuming the presidency.
Ferrell estimates that toward the end, FDR was able to work only between one and four hours a day.
“The cost to the Republic was surely great,” he writes. “Roosevelt in his last year was arguably as incapacitated as President Wilson had been, a shell of his former self, unable to keep abreast of the great decisions he had left to the end of the war, too ill or too arrogant to inform his successor about them.”
http://www.thehistorychannelclub.com/...
John F. Kennedy, through a gentlemen's agreement with the press, was able to shield the world from how sick and medicated he actually was during his presidency:
Kennedy's Addisonism was diagnosed in 1947 by a physician in London. Kennedy had probably been suffering (literally) from the disease for years, if not decades. After the diagnosis, he was given less than a year to live. He was so ill during the sea voyage home from England, in October 1947, that he was given the last rites [3f]. Yet, during the 1960 presidential race, the JFK campaign flatly denied that JFK had Addison disease.
The Kennedy campaign used a very narrow definition of Addision disease, namely, insufficiency of the adrenal glands caused by tuberculosis. This was deliberate, calculated, and grossly misleading. Bumgarner calls it "undoubtedly one of the most cleverly laid smoke screens ever put down around a politician" [More] [3g]. Adrenal insufficiency, no matter how caused, is a serious matter....
It is sometimes mentioned that Kennedy had a tan year-round. In most of North America, this is unusual, and raises the question of disease. Addison disease, for example, causes bronzing of the skin that is often mistaken for a tan. (An Addisonian tan would suggest that, despite the use of steroids, Kennedy's Addisonism was under-treated.)
Dr. Feelgood
Post and Robins, writing in 1993, thought it was "highly suggestive" that Kennedy took amphetamines while President, but considered it unproven. The recent Atlantic article states definitively that Kennedy received injections of amphetamines and painkillers from "Dr. Feelgood," a.k.a. Max Jacobson.
Kennedy dismissed concerns about the injections, saying, "I don't care if it's horse piss. It works." Jacobson's medical license was revoked in 1975. Previously, in 1969, all controlled substances in his possession were confiscated by the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. It is thought that Kennedy was under the influence of amphetamines when he made his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech.
http://www.doctorzebra.com/...
Famous migraneurs include Julius Caesar, Vincent Van Gogh and the third U.S. President, Thomas Jefferson:
From age 19 on, Jefferson had a tendency to develop prolonged incapacitating headaches, usually at 7-8 year intervals, usually correlated with stress or grief...
Violent headache for two days after behaving awkwardly in front of a girl he fancied (March 1764, age 20);
Six week headache after his mother's death on March 31, 1776;
Six weeks of headache soon after arriving, unhappy and homesick, as minister to France in 1785;
While overburdened as Secretary of State, headaches recurred when he learned that a friend had become ill, but recovered (April 1790);
About this time he had a second set of headaches, lasting from sunrise to sunset each day for 6 weeks.
http://www.doctorzebra.com/...
What a migrane is
Migraine (from the Greek words hemi, meaning half, and kranion, meaning skull) is a chronic neurological disorder characterized by moderate to severe headaches, and nausea.
It is about three times more common in women than in men.
The typical migraine headache is unilateral (affecting one half of the head) and pulsating in nature and lasting from 4 to 72 hours; symptoms include nausea, vomiting, photophobia (increased sensitivity to light), phonophobia (increased sensitivity to sound); the symptoms are generally aggravated by routine activity.
Approximately one-third of people who suffer from migraine headaches perceive an aura—transient visual, sensory, language, or motor disturbances signalling that the migraine will soon occur.
Initial treatment is with analgesics for the headache, an antiemetic for the nausea, and the avoidance of triggers. The cause of migraine headache is unknown; the most supported theory is that it is related to hyper-excitability of the cerebral cortex and/or abnormal control of pain neurons in the trigeminal nucleus of the brainstem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Her spokesperson's response:
The Daily Caller quotes a staffer saying Bachmann's migrane episodes “level her. They put her down. It’s actually sad. It’s very painful.”
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/...
But Alice Stewart, a spokeswoman for Bachmann, said ”she suffers from migraines and they’re under control with medicine.” Stewart contested descriptions of the episodes as “incapacitating” Bachmann but did not specify how the descriptions were wrong. “The information you have is incorrect,” Stewart said. She declined to discuss Bachmann’s hospital visits at all, saying, “I’m not going to go into her medical history.”
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/...
Michele Bachmann's alleged affliction, which is also being reported by Mother Jones, is a painful fate I wouldn't wish on anybody. I hope that she can get it treated so that she is not incapacitated once a week.
The political consequences of this development probably means we are looking at Gov. Rick Perry as the eventual GOP presidential nominee.