In social media posts Thursday, U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) says he has returned to Washington, D.C., where he is “back at work and will return to the Senate floor soon,” following his January stroke.
“Through the love and support from my family, medical team, and New Mexicans, I’m getting stronger each day in D.C. where I’m completing my recovery,” Lujan said in posts on Facebook and Twitter.
The Thursday post is accompanied by a photograph of a masked Luján wearing a dark sweatshirt and sitting at a portable table in a hospital room-type setting. A smart phone, work papers, a bottle of water and a book titled “Miracle Morning” are arrayed in front of him in the picture.
It was Luján’s second social-media update on his recovery within a five-day span. In a video released Sunday via Twitter, the lawmaker said “I’m on the road to recovery” from a recent stroke and should resume Senate votes in Washington, D.C., “in just a few short weeks.”
In the Sunday video, Luján is flanked by two members of his University of New Mexico medical team, and said he will enter an in-patient rehabilitation center to prepare for resumption of normal activities. The trio did not specify what rehab center, or its location, but evidently it is in Washington.
“Let me begin by expressing my thanks” to people across New Mexico and nationally for support and encouragement following a late January stroke, the masked Luján said in the five-minute video. “I am doing well, I’m strong. I’m on the road to recovery,” Luján said. The lawmaker added he expects ‘’in just a few short weeks to vote on important legislation” including the Joe Biden administration’s upcoming nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court.
On Jan. 27 the 49-year-old Luján checked himself into Christus St. Vincent Regional Hospital in Santa Fe after feeling dizzy and fatigued, according to a Feb. 1 statement from the senator’s chief of staff. Luján was transported to the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque, according to the statement. At least one newspaper editorial in New Mexico criticized the first-term senator’s staff for taking several days before announcing the stroke and hospitalization.
The video came days after the Albuquerque Journal reported Feb. 10 that the senator’s office had released no updated information on the lawmaker’s condition.
On the video, Luján thanked among others the surgeon who performed the decompressive surgery to ease swelling around his brain. Luján was found to have suffered a stroke in the cerebellum, affecting his balance. Luján said he looks forward to making a full recovery and eventually resuming activities such as bicycling.
Luján served in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2011 before being elected in November 2020 to succeed two-term Democratic incumbent Tom Udall who did not seek another term. In congress, the lawmaker has taken an action interest in in-state Department of Energy facilities including the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
