Justice Roberts leaves hospital

WASHINGTON – Chief Justice John Roberts walked out of a hospital in Maine on Tuesday, released a day after he suffered a seizure. The White House said he told President Bush he was doing fine.\nRoberts strode briskly out of the Penobscot Bay Medical Center in Rockport, Maine, wearing a blue sport coat, open collar shirt and slacks. He waved to onlookers before getting into a waiting sports utility vehicle for a short trip to a dock, where he then took a pontoon boat to his summer home on Hupper Island, near Port Clyde, Maine.\nRoberts had no response when a reporter hollered, “How are you feeling?”\nThe chief justice, 52, plans to continue his summer vacation, Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said. She said that doctors found no cause for concern after evaluating Roberts.\nRoberts was hospitalized after he fell on a dock near his home on Monday. He had a prior unexplained seizure in 1993. Bush had called Roberts earlier Tuesday, and press secretary Tony Snow said the president was assured the chief justice was doing well.\nSnow said that Roberts “sounded like he was in \ngreat spirits.”\nDoctors who examined Roberts after his seizure said they found no tumor, stroke or any other explanation for the episode.\nRoberts told the White House of his previous seizure when Bush nominated him to the nation’s highest court and “it was taken into consideration,” Snow said. Roberts also had physical exams that were forwarded to relevant members of Congress. “He was very open about it,” Snow said.\nThe spokesman did not know whether outside experts were consulted or whether Bush himself was informed at the time but said it was determined that Roberts had a clean bill of health and was competent to serve.\nTwo Senate Judiciary Committee aides who were involved in Roberts’ confirmation hearing in 2005 said the committee was aware of a previous seizure whose cause was never diagnosed. The sources would not say whether Roberts disclosed that he took any medication as a result. Such health information is often provided to the panel in private briefings, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.\nBy definition, someone who has had more than one seizure without any other cause is determined to have epilepsy, said Dr. Marc Schlosberg, a Washington Hospital Center neurologist who is not involved in the Roberts case.\nWhether Roberts will need anti-seizure medications to prevent another is something he and his doctor will have to decide. After two seizures, the likelihood of another at some point is greater than 60 percent.\nEpilepsy is merely a term for a seizure disorder, but it is a loaded term because it makes people think of someone who has frequent seizures, cautioned Dr. Edward Mkrdichian, a neurosurgeon at the Chicago Institute of Neurosurgery and Neuroresearch.