Biden: Brain Surgeon Told Him He Had Less Than 50% Chance of ‘Being Completely Normal’

Speaking at the White House National Conference on Mental Health on Monday, Vice President Joe Biden told a sometimes serious and sometimes jocular story about the two brain surgeries he needed in 1988 to deal with cranial aneurysms.

Biden told the White House audience “they take a saw and they cut your head off” and “they literally had to take the top of my head off.” He also recounted that as he was being wheeled into surgery he asked the neurosurgeon, “What are my chances of getting off this table completely normal?” The surgeon told Biden he had a better chance of living—and that that chance was in the 35 to 50 percent range.

“The only totally un-chartered portion of the universe is the brain,” Biden said in his White House speech. “You know, as we used to say in the Senate, excuse the point of personal privilege here: I had two cranial aneurysms, and they literally had to take the top of my head off. I mean, they take a saw and they cut your head off, and go in to find the artery that is–one was leaking, the other that hadn’t, before it burst.

Read more from this story HERE.