Despite Doug Williams, determined efforts to bury the hard truth in a bed of fluffy happy talk - three significant truths finally see the light of day in
Patrick Jackson's story on Castle.
1) He was on a ventilator as initially reported by Mike Matthews. This puts the lie to all of Elizabeth Wenk's earlier BS about how Castle was walking around and joking about sports on the day of the stroke. Why anyone should believe Wenk now is beyond me.
2) Wenk will not allow a neurologist to speak on the record. The report quotes Castle's
CARDIOLOGIST Nicholas Fortuin. Why? Castle did not suffer a heart attack. Maybe Castle's
neurologist might have felt honor bound to tell the truth about strokes which effect the thalamus - instead of trying to stick with the party line that the thalamus is not a real important part of the brain. [Thalamic strokes don't cause lack of motor function. Fortuin got that right. But they do cause apathy, and amnesia, personality changes, and loss of self-activation.] No biggy right Doug? What the public does not know can't hurt them.
3) Even his CARDIOLOGIST does not see Castle return to something approaching normalcy until at least JANUARY. Again, wenk tries to paint a rosy scenario by which Castle is back in "a week". Somehow that week reminds me of Mr. Bush's "another six months" for Iraq. It is that mythological unit of time that keeps receding like the horizon as you approach it.
Castle 's Wenk is not doing her boss any favors. This front page story attempted to carry water for Castle (yet again) only served to raise more questions that it answered. The "run out the clock" strategy is clearly on. For people, like Doug Williams, who are fine with that I have one question: Does that seat in Congress belong to Michael Castle or does it belong to the people of Delaware?
UPDATE: A back channel commenter notes that a stroke is a circulation issue so it makes sense that a cardiologist is the medical spokesperson.
That is a good dodge of you are trying to cover for why a neurologist was not quoted. But other than that it does not hold up. For one thing - the medical spokesperson is not talking about circulation but Catsle's motors skills. That is the realm of neurology.
Patrick Jackson can be reached at
pjackson@delawareonline.com