Fox News medical contributor Dr. Marc Siegel and CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta both weighed in on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) latest freezing incident on Wednesday and suggested what the underlying health issue could be.
On Fox News’ The Special Report with Bret Baier following the incident, Siegel noted that while he hadn’t examined McConnell, his best guess “would be Parkinson’s disease because that, in its later stages, can give you a freeze.”
Gupta also raised the possibility of Parkinson’s disease during an appearance on CNN’s The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday.
“There’s a long list of possibilities here. I think what we saw was pretty concerning. I think most people could see that,” Gupta said. “It was similar to what we saw in July where there was this freezing. It’s the freezing of the speech, it’s the freezing of the body, it’s the tight sort of grasping of the side of the lectern.”
He continued, “His face even has this mask-like feature to it. So there’s a lot of things that are going on there.”
Gupta argued that while McConnell could have suffered from a seizure or something similar, “It could be something like when somebody comes off of their medications for things like Parkinson’s. When the medication start to wear off, they may start to have freezing episodes as well.”
Talked to a neurologist about it and they were in agreement with the speculation from other neurologists around seizures as the most likely, was very focused on the fact he had a concussion recently, though also proposed that the frequent falls in combination with the staring might be Lewy Body, though would have expected longer staring if that.
In line with the responsible commentators, agreed couldn’t know for sure without a workup.
But the interesting part for me was that it was definitely seen as fitting with a neurological issue, even if the underlying cause wasn’t known.
Must have been the same one I saw, they said not uncommon following a concussion serious enough to be hospitalized for it.
And yet, here we are, politically… Plain as the mask melting off right in front of our faces, but nothing happens. We’ve spent so long pointing fingers even those that claim to represent us do only that — if as much, frankly. 🤷🏼♂️