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Sen. Kennedy hospitalized after seizure

(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-05-18 10:10

BOSTON - Sen. Edward Kennedy, a leading Democrat, suffered a seizure on Saturday but hours later was talking with family at his side in a Boston hospital.

US Senator Ted Kennedy is taken from a Hyannis Ambulance to a waiting Medflight helicopter at Barnstable Municipal Airport for transport to Mass General Hospital May 17, 2008. [Agencies]

Kennedy, 76, was rushed from the family vacation compound at Hyannisport, Massachusetts, to Cape Cod Hospital at 9 a.m., before being airlifted to Boston.

"Over the next couple of days, Senator Kennedy will undergo further evaluation to determine the cause of the seizure, and a course of treatment will be determined at that time," his doctor, Larry Ronan, said in a statement.

Kennedy, youngest brother of assassinated President John F. Kennedy, was resting comfortably, watching a Boston Red Sox baseball game with family and "not in any immediate danger," Ronan said.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, after talking with Kennedy's wife, Vicki, told reporters in Reno, Nevada, that the senator "will be fine" and had "woke up fighting" after the seizure, a Reid aide said.

The Boston Globe reported Kennedy suffered one seizure at his Cape Cod home and a second seizure aboard the helicopter transport flight to Boston.

Family members gathered at the hospital earlier in the day amid uncertainty over the long-serving Massachusetts senator's condition, including his three children and his nephew Joseph Kennedy, eldest son of assassinated Sen. Robert Kennedy.

Kennedy, the second-longest serving member of the current US Senate, is a leading liberal voice in US politics and has actively campaigned for Barack Obama in his bid to become the Democratic nominee in the November presidential election.

"As I've said many times before, Ted Kennedy is a giant in American political history. He's done more for the health care of others than just about anybody in history," Obama told reporters during a visit to a hospital in Eugene, Oregon.

"We are going to be rooting for him, and I, I insist on being optimistic about how it's going to turn out."

Campaigning in Kentucky, Sen. Hillary Clinton, Obama's rival for the Democratic nomination, offered her wishes for the senator's quick recovery.

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