Several days ago, GOP “strategist” Karl Rove made the news when he wondered out loud whether then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had suffered brain damage back in December 2012, of which voters should be informed if she does run for the presidency in 2016.
Rove said, “This was a serious deal. She basically was out of action. She spends over a month fighting this. …And they’re not particularly forthcoming.” (See Trail Dust’s post with the tongue-in-cheek title, “Hillary Dain Bramaged? You Decide.”)
According to ABC News’ timeline:
- On December 10, 2013, Hillary canceled a trip because of a unspecified illness, which the State Department described as being merely “under the weather.”
- We later found out that sometime early in the week of December 9, Hillary had fainted and fallen while at home.
- On December 13, we were told that Hillary had suffered a “not severe” concussion.
- On December 15, a State Dept. spokesman said that Hillary, “while suffering from a stomach virus,” became “dehydrated and fainted, sustaining a concussion,” after which she was recovering at home and being monitored regularly by her doctors. Hillary also informed the Senate and House Foreign Relations Committees that she wouldn’t be testifying at their respective hearings on Benghazi.
- 5 days later, on December 20, Hillary’s condition seemed to be more serious. Her spokesman said she had canceled all travel plans through mid-January.
- 10 days later, on Dec. 30, 2013, we were told that, in a follow-up examination, her doctors had discovered a blood clot “stemming from the concussion” and that she was hospitalized at New York-Presbyterian Hospital and being treated with anti-coagulants. We were assured that the blood clot did not result in a stroke or neurological damage.
- 3 days later, on Jan. 2, 2014, Hillary was released from the hospital. Her doctors declared she was making good progress “on all fronts” and they were “confident” she would make a full recovery.
- Another 5 days passed. On Jan. 7, a month after her fall, we were told Hillary had returned to work. Her spokeswoman said she was “fully recovered,” although she did not make a public appearance until 2 days later at a photo-op with the U.S. ambassador to Ireland, on Jan. 9. She was not wearing glasses at the photo-cop.
- Despite her having “full recovered,” 2 weeks later, on Jan. 23, Hillary testified on the Hill about Benghazi, wearing thick glasses instead of her usual contact lenses. Her spokesman vaguely explained that the glasses were “as a result of the concussion” and that she would be wearing the glasses “for a period of time because of lingering issues stemming from her concussion.”
- 6 days later, on Feb. 1, her last day as secretary of state, Hillary was still wearing the glasses.
- 2 weeks later, on Feb. 14, Hillary made her first public appearance since leaving office, without the glasses. In all, she wore the mysterious special glasses for 19 days.
On May 14, 2014, reacting to Karl Rove’s wondering about whether his wife had suffered brain damage from her fall 5 months ago, while insisting that there’s “nothing to” Hillary’s health questions, Bill Clinton divulged that Hillary had sustained injury that “required six months of very serious work to get over.” But he stressed that “It’s something she never low-balled with the American people, never tried to pretend it didn’t happen,” which of course isn’t true, as you can see from the above timeline.
Now, a New York ophthalmologist tells Fox News that the special glasses Hillary was wearing are used to treat double vision, which is sometimes caused by severe head trauma.
Dr. Marc Werner explains that Hillary’s glasses were Fresnel prism eyeglasses:
“In order to see one object, your eyes need to be pointed in the same direction. If your eyes are misaligned, one way to optically align them is to put a prism … on your glasses. Any issue which raises intracranial pressure can damage one of the nerves which moves the eye around, and if it damages one of the nerves, your eyes will be misaligned — maybe temporarily, maybe more permanently.”
In other words, although Karl Rove had since backed off from his brain damage comment, given what Dr. Werner said, the American people have every reason to wonder:
- What exactly caused Hillary to “fall” that unspecified day in December 2013. I don’t believe for a second it was “dehydration” from a “stomach virus.”
- Whether Hillary indeed sustained brain damage from her fall that required her to wear those special eyeglasses prescribed for double vision from “severe head trauma.”
~Eowyn
