By Catalina Clarke
Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut has been discharged from the hospital and will spend the next several weeks at a rehabilitation center recovering from a stroke, his office announced Friday — an absence that will keep him away from the Senate when Congress returns to Washington next week.
Murphy, 53, was treated at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore after suffering what his physician described as a small hemorrhagic stroke — a bleed in the brain — on Saturday, October 31. Murphy said he was at his son’s hockey game that afternoon when he felt numbness in his left arm and that something was “not right” with his body, and called 9-1-1. He was diagnosed with a small bleed in the thalamus region of the brain. His office first disclosed the stroke on November 1.
“I want to be direct with you, so here is my diagnosis,” Murphy said in Friday’s statement. “The doctors are very encouraged by the progress I’ve made so far. In order to take my recovery seriously and get back to work on the quickest timeline possible, I will be spending several weeks at a rehabilitation center after being discharged from the hospital today.”
“This has been a scary experience for me and my family, and I appreciate the continued respect for our privacy,” he said.
Dr. Jose Suarez, chief of neurosciences critical care at Johns Hopkins, said Murphy “has shown tremendous progress, and at the current rate of improvement, we expect that he will make a full recovery following rehabilitation.” The cause of the stroke has not been made public, and Murphy’s office has not given a specific date for his return to the Capitol.
Murphy said he remains engaged with his team and colleagues remotely while he recovers. “My staff continues to carry out our legislative priorities, serve constituents, and ensure the work of my office continues uninterrupted,” he said, thanking the doctors and staff at Johns Hopkins “who have treated me and cared for my family.”
Congress returns next week from a month-long recess into the final weeks of the lame-duck session, with federal funding set to expire on December 11. Murphy will miss votes during that stretch. His absence does not change control of the current Senate, and Democrats won a 54-seat majority on Tuesday that takes office on January 3; but Murphy is one of his party’s most visible national voices — a leading figure on gun policy and foreign affairs, a name in early speculation about the party’s Senate leadership, and a man widely discussed as a potential presidential candidate in 2028 — and he will be convalescing during the weeks when both parties choose the leaders of the next Congress. What a stroke and a season of rehabilitation mean for those larger ambitions, no one can say yet, and Murphy’s statement did not try to.
For now, his office’s message is narrower and simpler: the senator is improving, he is out of the hospital, and the work of recovery comes first.
Catalina Clarke, Editor-in-Chief, The Library Media
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