NEW CASTLE, New Hampshire — After days of speculation about his health prompted by his eye filling with blood on live television, Joe Biden, 76, brought up one of the most traumatic health experiences he has endured: a brain aneurysm.
“I ended up with what they call a cranial aneurysm,” Biden said at a campaign event on Friday. “I had to be rushed to a hospital in the middle of a snowstorm, and the fact is, the president was nice enough to offer a helicopter to get me there. I couldn’t go up because of the altitude. My fire company got me down in time for [a] 13-hour operation and saved my life.”
Biden suffered the burst aneurysm in 1988, when he was a Delaware senator. Believing that he was close to death, a Catholic priest was preparing to administer Biden’s last rites. Surgeons clipped a second aneurysm before it bust a few months later.
The former vice president told the story about his aneurysm as a way to praise firefighters, having been introduced at the event by the president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, Harold Schaitberger. The union endorsed Biden for president days after his campaign launch in late April.
In his Wednesday appearance on CNN during the network’s seven-hour climate town hall, part of Biden’s left eye filled with blood, prompting speculation about the cause and in the wake of concerns about the candidate’s age.
“Hopefully, this is no big deal,” tweeted former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain.
The blood appeared to be the result of a burst blood vessel, a common occurrence for any age with many possible causes. The Biden campaign declined to comment on the record about the reason for the blood.
“It looks terrible but it’s truly one of those things that looks bad but for the most part is not serious,” Dr. Thomas Steinemann, spokesman for the American Academy of Ophthalmology, told the Washington Examiner.
Biden has revealed little about his health since 2008, when he released his medical records as a vice presidential candidate.
