Teresa Heinz Kerry (74), wife of US Secretary of State John Kerry.
AFP/Washington
The wife of US Secretary of State John Kerry remained in hospital yesterday for tests, but her condition appeared to be improving after she suffered what may have been a seizure.
Teresa Heinz Kerry, 74, spent the night in Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston where she was flown late Sunday after first being rushed to a local hospital on Nantucket Island.
“After conducting tests overnight and this morning, doctors... have upgraded Mrs. Teresa Heinz Kerry’s condition from critical to fair,” Kerry’s personal spokesman Glen Johnson said in a statement.
Kerry and one of Heinz Kerry’s sons remained at the Boston hospital with her along with other family members, he said, adding that they were “touched by the outpouring of well-wishes.”
Johnson did not specify what Heinz Kerry was suffering from, but another source close to the family said they had become concerned on Sunday “when they noticed symptoms which were consistent with a sort of seizure.”
Heinz Kerry, a multilingual philanthropist born to Portuguese parents in colonial-era Mozambique, had arrived at the Nantucket hospital in critical but stable condition.
Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, had been celebrating the July 4 holiday weekend with his family at their home on Nantucket Island, an upscale tourist hotspot off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, on his first long break since becoming secretary of state in February.
The couple have been married for 18 years, and it is a second marriage for both of them. She has three sons and Kerry has two daughters.
Kerry, 69, has kept up a punishing schedule since succeeding Hillary Clinton as secretary of state and had been expected to return to the Middle East soon as he tries to relaunch Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
This week he is due to host a two-day strategic dialogue with top Chinese leaders, which is set to begin with a dinner this evening.
No decision has yet been made on whether he will be able to attend, the source said.
Kerry had headed straight for Massachusetts to spend time with his family after returning home on July 3 from a 12-day tour to several Middle Eastern nations, as well as India and Brunei.
He has already visited 27 countries, spent some 68 days out of five months on the road, travelled some 134,691 miles and spent a total of 293 hours, or some 12 days, in his Air Force plane.
A former interpreter at the UN, Heinz Kerry was married to senator Henry John Heinz, the heir to the Heinz ketchup fortune, who was killed in a helicopter crash in 1991.
She inherited many of his trusts and is very wealthy.
A committed environmentalist like Kerry, they had first met at an Earth Day summit in 1990. They then met again two years later in Rio for an Earth Day event, after Heinz’s death.
In 2009 Heinz Kerry revealed she had been treated for breast cancer.