Schroeder Reportedly Suffering From Amnesia

Hospital officials said that a series of strokes last December has left William J. Schroeder with amnesia, it was reported Sunday.

“His problem is his short-term memory,” Linda Broadus, a spokeswoman for Humana Inc., operator of Humana Hospital Audubon, said in a report published by the New York Times.

Broadus said that Schroeder has trouble remembering such things as who visited him earlier in the day, who joined him for breakfast or what he had to eat.

Dr. Gary Fox, a neurologist, told the newspaper that, as a result of the strokes, even if Schroeder did not have an artificial heart he “couldn’t function on his own and would need custodial care.” He said, for example, that Schroeder would not be able to handle routine financial matters.

Schroeder’s temperature recently averaged “between 100 and 102,” but once the drugs that he was being given for depression were stopped, it went back to normal, Dr. Alan Lansing, chairman of Humana Heart Institute International, said.

“Then he was put on another drug and it went back up again . . . . The flu he’s had for the past several days may have had something to do with it,” Lansing said, adding that Schroeder’s temperature may have peaked at 105.

Broadus said Sunday that Schroeder’s bout with the flu over the last two weeks will prevent him from receiving a long-awaited present, a move to an apartment across the street from the hospital on his 53rd birthday, which is Thursday, Valentine’s Day.