Bush Reports Losing Weight, Feeling Tired

WASHINGTON —  President Bush said Wednesday that he has lost 10 pounds in the last three weeks, is feeling fatigued and has decided to extend his Memorial Day vacation next week as he adjusts to the medication designed to cure his thyroid disorder.

“Lowest I’ve been in 30 years,” Bush said of his weight, 187 pounds. “I’d like to keep it off.”

Doctors expect Bush to continue feeling tired for at least another couple of weeks, a common side effect of the radioactive iodine used to destroy his overactive thyroid, Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said.

In the meantime, staff members have begun putting rest breaks into Bush’s schedule. The usually restless President is spending the time in an easy chair in his study, reading books, Fitzwater said. Bush, who took Monday off this week, plans to go to his summer home in Maine over the Memorial Day weekend and has decided to extend his stay there several days.

Bush conceded that he had been “dead tired” Tuesday, a day in which he announced a new CIA director, greeted Queen Elizabeth II at the White House and was host of a state dinner, and he complained, mildly, about his current lack of physical exercise.

“I miss my exercise, I really do. This is the longest I’ve been in my life” without it, Bush told reporters at the White House. “I’m . . . itching to get back into action here outside.”

However, doctors have discouraged Bush from resuming his usually intensive exercise routine until after his current round of medication is finished, and, so far, he has heeded their advice.

Bush’s weight loss is a symptom of the excessive hormone that his thyroid gland is producing and was an early--but missed--clue to his problem. The excess hormone production also makes Bush’s heart unusually sensitive to adrenaline released by stress or exercise, thus accounting for Bush’s bouts with irregular heartbeat.

To treat hyperactive thyroids, doctors routinely give patients radioactive iodine. The thyroid picks up iodine circulating in the blood, and the radioactivity, concentrating in the gland, destroys it. After that, patients must take synthetic thyroid hormones for the rest of their lives to maintain a proper metabolism.

While the iodine is doing its work, patients are somewhat radioactive, particularly around the throat, where the thyroid is situated. Because of that, doctors tell thyroid patients to avoid hugging small children, who are particularly susceptible to radiation damage, a problem Bush noted as his granddaughter, Marshall, ran up to kiss him at her fifth birthday party Wednesday afternoon.

Bush is currently taking several medications daily--procainamide and digoxin to stabilize his heart rate, coumadin to prevent blood clots, one baby aspirin as a preventive therapy against strokes and three drops of potassium iodide for the thyroid, Fitzwater said. He is also receiving daily electrocardiogram tests to monitor his heart.