Edward Kennedy suffers seizure

Sen. Kennedy is resting after what doctors had feared was a stroke.

BOSTON (AP) — Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the lone surviving son in a famed political family, suffered a seizure at his Cape Cod home Saturday morning but was recovering well enough by afternoon to watch a Red Sox game from his hospital room.

The 76-year-old Kennedy did not suffer a stroke, as was first feared, and doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital said he is not in any immediate danger.

“He’s resting comfortably, and watching the Red Sox game with his family,” said Dr. Larry Ronan, his primary care physician. “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.”

On Saturday morning, Kennedy felt ill at his home and went to Cape Cod Hospital. After a discussion with his doctors in Boston, the senator was flown by helicopter to Massachusetts General Hospital, where he was soon joined by his wife, Victoria, three of his children and his niece Caroline Kennedy.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he spoke to Kennedy’s wife in the afternoon and was told “his condition is not life-threatening, but serious.”

“But the one thing I can say, if there ever was a fighter, anyone who stood for what we as Americans, we as Democrats, stand for, it’s Ted Kennedy,” Reid said addressing the Nevada Democratic Convention in Reno.

In October, Kennedy had surgery to repair a nearly complete blockage in a major neck artery. The discovery was made during a routine examination of a decades-old back injury.

The hour-long procedure on his left carotid artery — a main supplier of blood to the face and brain — was performed at Massachusetts General. This type of operation is performed on more than 180,000 people a year to prevent a stroke.

The doctor who operated on Kennedy said at the time that surgery is reserved for those with more than 70 percent blockage, and Kennedy had “a very high-grade blockage.”

Distinguishing between a seizure and a transient ischemic attack, TIA, often called a mini-stroke, can sometimes be difficult.

Seizures are little electrical storms in the brain. They tend to be brief; an occasional one can happen to anyone even without a prior history of seizures, especially if there has been some prior brain trauma.

A stroke is either ischemic — a clog in a blood vessel — or hemorrhagic, bleeding in the brain. Hemorrhagic ones are very rare. Kennedy had the carotid artery surgery to try to prevent the ischemic type. A stroke kills brain tissue; how much depends on how big it is and how long it lasts. Some people show no lasting effects; others can be partly paralyzed on one side or somewhere in-between.

“Sen. Kennedy was at high risk because he had surgery for an artery in his neck,” said Dr. Wendy Wright, The Emory Clinic, Assistant Professor, Departments of Neurology and Neurosurgery.