Kelley Paul, Sen. Rand Paul’s wife, shamed the media in an op-ed for CNN and updated the world on her husband’s condition, after he was attacked by a neighbor earlier this month.
‘The average person takes 20,000 breaths a day. Since November 3, my husband, Rand Paul, has not taken a single one without pain,’ she wrote.
She was angry that reporters were ‘delighting’ in headlines suggesting that the senator was at fault for the ‘deliberate, blindside attack’ by an ‘attention-seeking person’ the couple hadn’t spoken to in a decade.
IN HEALTHIER TIMES: Kelley Paul (left) stands next to her husband Sen. Rand Paul (right) at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April 2016. Kelley Paul wrote a strongly worded editorial on CNN’s website about the media’s treatment of her husband
Kelley Paul (left) also disclosed that her husband Sen. Rand Paul (right) contracted pneumonia, the latest health hurdle after being attacked by a neighbor earlier this month at their Bowling Green, Kentucky home
Kelley Paul said her husband got sick while trying to return to Washington, D.C., to get some work done. Here Sen. Rand Paul (center) rides an elevator in the U.S. Capitol Building, while looking miserable
‘The fact is, neither Rand nor I have spoken to the attacker in 10 years (since before his wife and children moved away) other than a casual wave from the car,’ Kelley Paul wrote.
The attacker was identified as Rene Boucher (pictured) who Kelley Paul said she and her husband hadn’t spoken to in 10 years
Neither of their families had communicated either, she said.
And they’d seen the neighbor less frequently once Rand Paul was elected to the Senate in 2010, meaning they split their time between the Bowling Green, Kentucky home, where the incident occurred, and Washington, D.C.
‘The only “dispute” existed solely in the attacker’s troubled mind, until, on a beautiful autumn day, he ran down the hill on our property and slammed his body into Rand’s lower back as he stood facing away, wearing noise canceling headphones to protect his ears from the lawnmower,’ Kelley Paul wrote.
The neighbor, identified as Rene Boucher, was charged with misdemeanor assault.
Boucher’s lawyer has said the attack erupted from a ‘trivial’ dispute and wasn’t politically motivated.
‘This was not a “scuffle,” a “fight” or an “altercation,” as many in the media falsely describe it,’ Kelley Paul said, labeling it, instead, as one-sided.
She noted how her husband had six broken ribs, with three displaced, a pleural effusion, a build-up of water in the lungs, and now had pneumonia, which he caught after flying back to Washington to try and do his job as a senator last week.
‘As we walked through the airport returning from D.C., he was shivering with a 102.5 [degree] fever, and the next morning his internist diagnosed pneumonia in his damaged lung,’ she said.
She, meanwhile, has been ‘distraught’ over seeing her husband in so much pain, as she sees him labor through every breathe or heave over in coughing fits.
‘There have been several nights where I had my hand on the phone ready to call 911 when his breathing became so labored it was terrifying,’ she said.
Bringing up tomorrow’s Thanksgiving holiday and mourning the fact that Rand Paul won’t be able to play golf with his sons or take part in the neighborhood touch football game, she shamed the media for suggesting any of this was her husband’s fault.
‘This has been a terrible experience,’ she said. ‘Made worse by the media’s gleeful attempts to blame Rand for it, ridiculing him for everything from moving his own lawn to composting.’