AP / OneNewsNow.com 05/12/11 - RALEIGH, NC – Evangelist Billy Graham was alert and resting comfortably Wednesday evening after being admitted to an Asheville, NC, hospital for the treatment of pneumonia, doctors said.
The 92-year-old Graham arrived Wednesday morning at Mission Hospital after he suffered a health episode overnight that included sweating, coughing and breathing difficulty, Graham spokesman A. Larry Ross told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “But he was never in distress or an acute situation,” Ross said.
“Throughout his stay, he had remained alert and in good spirits and with his humor intact,” Ross said. “He signed his own admission papers.”
Testing suggested he was suffering from pneumonia, and diagnostic tests showed his heart was normal.
Dr. Shaw Henderson, a pulmonologist, said Graham was being treated with antibiotics and was “clinically stable,” according to a statement from the hospital.
Graham’s primary physician, Dr. Lucien Rice, said in the statement that no date had been set for Graham’s release, but that he “is resting comfortably and is fully alert.”
Age-related conditions such as macular degeneration and hearing loss have kept Graham at his home in Montreat in western North Carolina in recent years, Ross said. But he said Graham has remained in good health overall.
Franklin Graham, who heads relief agency Samaritan’s Purse, along with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, is in North Korea through the end of the week, spokesman Todd Shearer told the AP. He’s monitoring his father’s health but doesn’t plan to return home early at this point, Shearer said.
On OCTOBER 3, 1789, from the U.S. Capitol in New York City, President George Washington
