Mother Teresa Shows Marked Improvement

Mother Teresa of Calcutta, the 81-year-old missionary hospitalized 10 days ago for a life-threatening illness, has markedly improved and now appears to be on the “right road to recovery,” her doctors said Saturday.

Doctors at Scripps Clinic & Research Foundation upgraded Mother Teresa’s condition Saturday from serious to fair, saying she had responded well to procedures to treat congestive heart failure brought on by pneumonia. Physicians said there was clear improvement overnight.

Early Saturday, doctors at the La Jolla hospital found Mother Teresa sitting in a chair in her room overlooking the Pacific Ocean, reading and stroking rosary beads. She reported no more chest pain, ate a full breakfast--yogurt, tea and a muffin--and just plain “looked a lot better,” doctors said at a press conference Saturday afternoon.

If the celebrated Nobel Peace Prize winner continues to get better, she could leave the hospital by late this week, doctors said, but cautioned that “setbacks can happen” and there is no timetable for her to leave.

Known for her charity work with the poor around the globe, Mother Teresa has received international attention since entering the hospital Dec. 26.

On Saturday, she shared with her doctors and nurses a telegram she received Friday from President Bush that wished her a “speedy recovery,” said Dr. Paul Teirstein, one of the doctors treating her. The hospital has been inundated with calls and visits from reporters and well-wishers, spokeswoman Sue Pondrom said. But Mother Teresa remains in an intensive care unit of the hospital, with a guard posted outside her room, Pondrom said. The hospital itself is paying for her stay.

Mother Teresa checked into the hospital after she resisted treatment last month for flu-like symptoms and her condition deteriorated into pneumonia. She had been in Tijuana visiting one of her missionaries as part of a worldwide tour.

The day after entering the hospital, suffering from congestive heart failure brought on by the pneumonia, Mother Teresa underwent an angioplasty, a procedure to increase the flow of oxygen to her heart. It involves threading a small balloon device into the arteries so they can be enlarged, which then increases the flow of oxygen.

That treatment was successful, Teirstein said. Initially, though, Mother Teresa responded slowly to antibiotics. Though dramatically better Saturday, with her heart rhythm back to regular, she remains on a heart monitor and still receives oxygen to help her breathe.

It won’t be until early next month, doctors said, that they will know for sure whether Mother Teresa’s body has accepted the heart procedure. And when she leaves the hospital, Dr. Patricia Aubanel said, she will have to follow some common-sense rules--eating right, wearing a coat in the cold and taking her medicine.

In the meantime, doctors said Saturday, she is enjoying her view of the ocean and sifting through all those cards and letters. “She looked at me and smiled, and said, ‘I read lots and lots of letters,’ ” including the telegram from Bush, Aubanel said, adding that she’s in “very good spirits.”

Mother Teresa also has become aware that the hospital is staging a daily briefing for the press and found it unusual that reporters were interested in what she eats, what she wears, where she sits in her room, who she talks to and every other conceivable detail of her hospital stay, Teirstein said.

He said Mother Teresa told him about the reporters: “Such funny questions. Well, they have good intent. Still, they’re very funny questions.”