The President’s physician has a critical role in the White House pecking order, but he or she is expected to keep a low profile. Inside the White House, the physician is in close proximity to the President all the time. The physician’s office is in the residential part of the building, directly across the hall from the President’s private elevator and he or she is “generally the first and last to see the President” every day. While the physician travels with the President all the time, he is expected to keep a distance and not attract any attention and keep himself safe in the event of an assassination attempt on the President. Because, “you can’t treat the President if you are dead,” as Connie Mariano, a former White House physician, put it.
President Donald Trump, the oldest to occupy the White House, has caused manifold increase in the traditionally high levels of American curiosity in the Commander-in-Chief’s health. Mr. Trump thought the best way to counter speculation about his health was to get White House physician Ronny Jackson to take all questions. The result was a 50-minute live presser, turning the usually tepid release of the annual medical report of the President into an intense affair.
Mr. Jackson, a military doctor who served as physician to Barack Obama also, appeared at ease in the spotlight. If they fell ill inside the compound, he would be the one called to take care of them, he reminded the reporters. “So when you ask your questions, please keep that in mind,” he said. Mr. Trump was enjoying the “overall health benefits that come from a lifetime of abstinence from tobacco and alcohol”, he said. Among the questions the reporters asked were: “Are you ruling out things like early onset Alzheimer’s?”; “Are you looking at dementia-like symptoms?”; “Do you have any concerns about the President’s use of Twitter?” and “[E]xplain to me how a guy who eats McDonald’s and KFC and all those Diet Cokes and who never exercises, is in as good as shape as you say he’s in?”
Mr. Trump does not exercise at all, and even rides a cart from hole to hole while playing golf. “The good part is that, you know, we can build on that pretty easily,” said the doctor, to laughter. As for diet, Mr. Trump is heeding to the doctor’s advice and has stopped sending aides to fetch burgers from outside the White House. He is now eating what White House cooks cook, and the doctor promised to put him on an increasingly healthier diet and an exercise regimen with the objective of reducing his weight by 10 to 15 pounds over the next year.
Tremendous stamina
But the seemingly glamorous job of the physician is not easy when the patient is the most powerful person on the planet, and drawn from the military, doctors are also dealing with their Commander-in-Chief. Over the years, White House physicians have taken a route that the First Patient can’t easily overrule — the ‘First Lady’. Bill Clinton followed Dr. Mariano’s advice to rest after being diagnosed with a stomach flu only after she told him that she was going to report it to Hillary Clinton. “On occasion, I have to get the First Lady involved…” said Dr. Jackson.
The physician said that while he himself gets drained after overseas travel, the President has tremendous stamina and manages with four-to-five hours of sleep. Not only could Mr. Trump complete this term, he could even finish another term without a health incident, according to Dr. Jackson. It’s all about genes, he told journalists. “It’s called genetics… Some people have just great genes.”
Varghese K. George works for The Hindu and is based in Washington
