HOUSTON — A "stubborn" fever that kept former President George H.W. Bush in a hospital over Christmas has gotten worse, and doctors have put him on a liquids-only diet, his spokesman said Wednesday.
Jim McGrath, Bush's spokesman in Houston, had said earlier in the day that the fever had gone away, but he later corrected himself.
"It's an elevated fever, so it's
actually gone up in the last day or two," McGrath told The Associated
Press. "It's a stubborn fever that won't go away."
Doctors at Methodist Hospital in Houston
have run tests and are treating the fever with Tylenol, but they still
haven't nailed down a cause, McGrath said. Doctors also have put Bush on
a liquid diet, though McGrath could not say why.
The bronchitis-like cough that
initially brought Bush to the hospital on Nov. 23 has improved, McGrath
said. The 88-year-old is now coughing about once a day, he said.
Bush was visited on Christmas by
his wife, Barbara, his son, Neil, and Neil's wife, Maria, and a
grandson, McGrath said. Bush's daughter, Dorothy, will arrive Wednesday
in Houston from Bethesda, Md. The 41st president has also been visited
twice by his sons, George W. Bush, the 43rd president, and Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida.
Bush and his wife live in Houston during the winter and spend their summers at a home in Kennebunkport, Maine.
The former president was a naval
aviator in World War II — at one point the youngest in the Navy — and
was shot down over the Pacific. He achieved notoriety in retirement for
skydiving on at least three of his birthdays since leaving the White
House in 1992.
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