Noam Chomsky has been hospitalized in his wife Valeria’s home country of Brazil in an effort to speed up recovery from a stroke he suffered last June. The 95-year-old linguist and activist was initially taken to the intensive care unit, but has since moved to a regular room, where he is being tended to by his family and medical staff.
Mrs. Chomsky made the decision with the help of medical professionals to have her husband transported to the South American nation after determining that doctors there could provide different and potentially better treatment than he had received in the United States. The couple split their time between the US and Brazil, and have had a home there together since 2015.
According to Folha de São Paulo, Mrs. Chomsky said the trip was not only expensive, but “long, painful, and stressful.” She hired a private ambulance jet to take her and her husband, along with two nurses, from the US to São Paulo, however because of the plane’s size, they had to make two stops along the way.
Since arriving at the Brazilian hospital, Chomsky has been working with a neurologist, speech therapist, and pulmonologist, all of whom check up on him daily. Mrs. Chomsky noted that his condition had improved significantly, though he still has trouble speaking and the right side of his body is numb.
As the Associated Press reports, Chomsky has been keeping up with the news out of Israel, and makes a point of raising his left arm in anger whenever he sees images of the war. Despite having lived on a kibbutz in his younger years, over his decades-long career Chomsky has been a vocal critic of Israel. Following the October 7 terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas, many awaited his response, however he was too weak to offer one.
