Joe Biden was lying on the operating table and about to get surgery for his second brain aneurysm when the doctor told him he might not recover.
“What's the most likely thing that will happen if I live?” Biden asked him. “
Well,” the doctor replied, “the side of the brain that the first aneurysm is on controls your ability to speak.”
That’s when the gaffe-prone Biden thought to himself: “Why in the hell didn’t they tell me this before the '88 campaign?’ It could’ve saved us all a lot of trouble, you know what I mean?”
That joke, which Biden told in a speech in 2013, has taken on new relevance now that he’s on the campaign trail for president again and facing questions about his gaffes. Though Biden has a longstanding reputation for verbal flubs, they’re now inextricably linked to the 76-year-old’s age.
But concerns about Biden’s age and mental fitness are likely overblown, according to experts on aging and the brain, as well as actuarial tables used by the insurance industry to estimate the health and longevity of customers.
The two brain aneurysms Biden suffered in 1988 were fully treated and he showed no signs of mental trouble as a result, said Dr. Neal Kassell, who performed the surgery on Biden three decades ago. Nor did Biden suffer any brain damage that could come back to haunt him in old age, Kassell said.
“He is every bit as sharp as he was 31 years ago. I haven’t seen any change,” Kassell said. “I can tell you with absolute certainty that he had no brain damage, either from the hemorrhage or from the operations that he had. There was no damage whatsoever.”
Originally Posted by thelastdisciple
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