Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) says he’s “grateful for any time” he has following a stroke that “technically killed” him.
“I didn’t have a near-death experience, because technically I had died,” the Pennsylvania Democrat said in an interview with Men’s Health published Monday, regarding his stroke last year that came just days before the Keystone State’s Senate primary.
“It wasn’t like seeing lights or whatever, but it was feeling that everything was being bounded up in things, all coming up through, and I was going to go up to a window into the sky. Then I was woken up by the doctor who was standing over me, and he had an X-ray of my clot here that technically killed me, saying, ‘We got this. You don’t have to worry about your stroke,’” Fetterman, 54, recalled.
“And if this doctor that cathetered it up my leg — I mean, it’s astonishing technology — if he was running late for work or if he was on vacation, I would be up there with the harps. People in their middle age talk about their mortality. I’ve experienced my mortality, so I’m not afraid of it anymore,” Fetterman said.
The father of three also opened up about being treated for clinical depression for six weeks at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center last February.
“Let me say this to anyone that’s thinking about this: There is a way out. There is a way out, and do not ever, ever, ever, ever hurt yourself,” Fetterman said.
“I considered that, because if I hurt myself, then I am leaving a blueprint of my children that in their life, when things happen or things are bad, that this is what Dad did,” Fetterman said before starting to cry, according to the magazine.
Fetterman said he’ll “never be arrogant” and think he’s “licked depression or I don’t have to be vigilant or there aren’t going to be tests.”
Asked when he’ll start thinking about reelection, Fetterman said, “Well, that’s kind of well into the horizon. Now it’s just being the kind of senator that Pennsylvania deserves.”
“And I’m grateful for the choice that they made to give me the ability to serve,” he said, “and I think the depression has made me a much more effective and empathetic senator. After kind of dying, I’m just grateful for any time, whatever that is.”