Former President Bill Clinton released from California hospital

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Former President Bill Clinton has been released from a Southern California hospital on Sunday after he spent five nights receiving treatment for a urological infection.

Clinton and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, left the University of California Irvine Medical Center in Orange, just southeast of Los Angeles, as they held each other’s arms. 

The former president shook hands with hospital staff as he departed the facility alongside his wife of 46 years. 

Just before his release, the former first lady was seen being escorted to the entrance of the facility early on Sunday morning. 

The former president will head home to New York to continue his recovery, a spokesman said. 

Bill Clinton left the hospital at around 8am local time with Hillary Clinton on his arm. 

Dressed in jeans and a sports coat and wearing a face mask, he made his way out of the hospital slowly and stopped to shake hands with doctors and nurses lined up on the sidewalk.

He gave a thumbs-up when a reporter asked how he was feeling, and he and Hillary Clinton then boarded a black SUV. 

They departed in a motorcade escorted by the California Highway Patrol and headed to the airport.

Bill Clinton’s ‘fever and white blood cell count are normalized, and he will return home to New York to finish his course of antibiotics,’ Dr. Alpesh N. Amin said in a statement shared on Twitter by a Clinton spokesman. 

He plans to continue his recovery at his home in Chappaqua, New York, officials said.   

Clinton spokesman Angel Ureña said in a statement on Saturday that all health indicators were ‘trending in the right direction.’ 

‘President Clinton has continued to make excellent progress over the past 24 hours,’ Ureña said.

Hillary Clinton has been with her husband at the hospital. She returned with daughter Chelsea at around 8am Saturday in an SUV accompanied by Secret Service agents.

Hillary, donning a black and white tunic, headband, face mask and sunglasses carried a coffee as she walked into the hospital alongside Chelsea, who wore jeans, a jacket and baseball cap and held onto her husband Marc Mezvinsky’s arm. 

The 42nd president, 75, was admitted into the hospital Tuesday after a urological infection caused by E. coli developed into sepsis, a life-threating reaction to an infection.  

Clinton’s doctors said that a urinary tract infection developed into urosepsis. 

President Joe Biden said Friday night that he had spoken to Bill Clinton, and the former president ‘sends his best.’

‘He’s doing fine; he really is,’ Biden said during remarks at the University of Connecticut.

Biden told reporters in Storrs, Connecticut, on Friday: ‘Oh, I wanted to see how he was doing… I’ve been trying to get a hold of him. He’s doing fine, he really is.’

Biden added: ‘He’s not in any serious condition.

‘He is getting out shortly, as I understand it. Whether that’s tomorrow or the next day, I don’t know.’

An aide to the former president said Clinton’s urological infection spread to his bloodstream, but he never went into septic shock, a potentially life-threatening condition.

The aide, who spoke to reporters at the hospital on the condition his name wasn’t used, said Clinton was in an intensive care section of the hospital but wasn’t receiving ICU care. 

Biden also noted that he hasn’t seen Clinton in a while and plans to ‘have some lunch’ with him in the near future, when he’s fully recovered. 

‘He is in great spirits and has been spending time with family, catching up with friends, and watching college football,’ said Ureña´s Saturday statement.

Clinton, who had a quadruple heart bypass in 2004, was in Southern California for a ‘series of events’ when he fell ill, CBS medical contributor Dr David Agus said.

‘At the first event he started to feel light headed, nausea, vomiting and was brought to a hospital,’ doctors told him.

‘At that hospital he was found to have an infection in his blood and they did a CAT scan, looked over his body and even his brain. And the infection source was found to be the urine.

Clinton has been talking to staff and family, and walking around, it was reported.

Hillary Clinton also visited her husband on Thursday and Friday – both times alongside her longtime confidante Huma Abedin.

On Friday morning she and Abedin, who was married to disgraced New York lawmaker Anthony Weiner, checked in on Clinton. 

The former first lady was pictured in a blue dress, flanked by security guards, as she entered the hospital while a masked Abedin wore blue jeans and a floral blouse.

Later that night a somber-looking Hillary was pictured entering the unit to visit Bill for the second time that day before being driven away in the back of a car. Abedin was also seen in the backseat of the car. 

Hillary reportedly represented them both at a previously-scheduled event in Southern California before arriving at the medical center. 

She was first pictured visiting her husband on Thursday night as news of the former President’s hospitalization broke.

Abedin was with her then, too, and wore a dress and black blazer alongside Hillary, who wore a grey jacket, black pants and kitten heels.    

In the years since Clinton left the White House in 2001, the former president has faced health scares.  

In addition to his heart bypass, he returned to the hospital for surgery for a partially collapsed lung in 2005, and in 2010 he had a pair of stents implanted in a coronary artery.

He responded by embracing a largely vegan diet that saw him lose weight and report improved health.

Clinton repeatedly returned to the stump, campaigning for Democratic candidates, most notably Hillary Clinton during her failed 2008 bid for the presidential nomination. 

In 2016, as Hillary Clinton sought the White House as the Democratic nominee, her husband – by then a grandfather and nearing 70 – returned to the campaign trail.