President Goes Home, Is Welcomed by Cheering Staff

President Reagan, feeling “great” but walking stiffly, left Bethesda Naval Medical Center Thursday and returned to the White House, where he will continue his recovery from prostate surgery.

Cheering White House staff members, led by Vice President George Bush, greeted Reagan as he arrived on the South Lawn before noon after a short helicopter ride from the hospital in suburban Maryland.

The President, holding hands with First Lady Nancy Reagan and smiling broadly, walked more than a hundred feet to his residence.

‘Haven’t Stopped’ Working

“I feel great,” Reagan, who will turn 76 next month, told reporters as he left the hospital. When asked if he was ready to go back to work, the President responded: “Of course. I haven’t stopped.”

On the South Lawn, Reagan briefly joked with reporters. When asked what he planned for an encore, he responded: “An appendectomy.”

Reagan spent Thursday afternoon resting and meeting with advisers, including Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan and Frank C. Carlucci, his national security adviser, the White House said.

On Saturday, Reagan will deliver his weekly radio address from his residence, according to White House spokesman Larry Speakes. The President is expected to return to the Oval Office with an abbreviated work schedule next week.

Put on Antibiotics

“We don’t anticipate any complications requiring any medical attention,” Speakes said, adding that “a regimen of antibiotics” but “nothing else” had been prescribed for Reagan. “I don’t know of any hitches whatsoever,” he said.

The President will “set his own pace” while recuperating, Speakes said. But, for six weeks, Reagan will be under doctors’ orders to do “no heavy lifting” or strenuous exercise.

The decision to discharge Reagan was made by his physicians early Thursday, about 72 hours after the President underwent a one-hour operation to relieve a urinary obstruction caused by his enlarged prostate gland. Patients usually remain in the hospital for about four days after this type of surgery.

‘Condition Excellent’

“The President’s remarkable recovery continues,” according to a statement issued by Army Col. John Hutton, the White House physician, who will now have primary responsibility for monitoring Reagan’s condition. “All postoperative signs are normal . . . . His physicians find his condition excellent in every respect.”

During the hospitalization, Reagan was also checked for a possible recurrence of the colon cancer that was removed in July, 1985, and Hutton said that no malignancy was found. These exams will be repeated later this year.

Before the surgery, Reagan had donated a unit of his own blood, which is type O positive, in case he required a transfusion. The blood, which turned out not to be needed, will be frozen and stored at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center for three years, in case the President requires a transfusion in the future, Speakes said.

Little Information

The White House has made public only limited information about Reagan’s hospital stay, in contrast to more complete reports after the President’s 1985 cancer surgery and the 1981 assassination attempt, in which he suffered gunshot wounds.

Speakes reiterated Wednesday that there are no plans to allow reporters to speak to the team of physicians from the Mayo Clinic and the Bethesda center who attended the President.