Brazilian President Lula returned to his official residence in Brasilia this Sunday, two days after his hip operation, leaving the hospital earlier than expected after a “good clinical progress”, the presidency announced. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, 77, “is at the Alvorada Palace”, in the official residence where he will continue his convalescence, the presidency said. In the process, the Syrian-Lebanese hospital in Brasilia, where the operation took place on Friday, confirmed in a medical bulletin that the head of state had left the establishment, “after having presented a good clinical evolution” .
Another bulletin, earlier in the day, explained that Lula had “spent the night in a stable condition” and that he had even “gone up and down stairs with the help of physiotherapists.” He had already taken a few steps and started physiotherapy sessions on Saturday morning, the day after the surgery. Shortly after this operation, a complete hip replacement, his doctors initially planned to leave the hospital “Monday, Tuesday at the latest.”
“Good response from Lula to anesthesia”
The left-wing president, who began his third term in January, had an operation under general anesthesia to relieve pain that caused him to suffer more than a year ago and left him “in a bad mood.” After fitting the prosthesis, the doctors “took advantage of Lula’s good response to anesthesia” to perform another procedure, cosmetic surgery, aimed at correcting the drooping eyelids.
Even though he ended up returning earlier than expected, the former trade unionist will have to remain confined to Brasilia for at least four weeks, a forced break in his intense schedule of travels abroad. He still plans to “work normally” during his convalescence. His personal doctor, Roberto Kalil Filho, assured Friday that he had “the certainty” that his patient would be back on his feet in time to go to the UN COP-28 Climate Conference in Dubai at the end of November.
An important meeting for the man who poses as a champion of the environment and has promised to stop deforestation in the Amazon by 2030. Until then, he will have to move around with a walker, but his personal photographer convinced not to show it in front of the cameras, to avoid giving any sign of weakness.