‘So grateful’: Inside John Fetterman’s hopeful first week back in the Senate after his treatment for depression

WASHINGTON — John Fetterman had been here before — but not really.

There were no billowy pink blooms on the cherry trees the first time around. The Washington Monument didn’t seem to pop quite as boldly against the sky in January. When people approached to congratulate him, or ask for a picture, he felt numb, instead of flattered, as he does now.

Fetterman says his return to the Capitol this week after six weeks of hospitalization for treatment of clinical depression was his first time experiencing the Senate as himself.

“It’s so wonderful to actually be enjoying your job, because it really wasn’t any of that during my time when I started here,” Fetterman told The Inquirer in his first interview since resuming work in the Senate.

» READ MORE: ‘It’s great to be back’: John Fetterman returns to the Senate

As Fetterman readjusts to the daily life of a senator, he is also rounding out a year of intense highs and lows — a stroke that nearly killed him last May, winning a brutal campaign for a coveted Senate seat in November, and a public battle with severe depression. He returns to Capitol Hill, his depression in remission, eager to highlight Democratic priorities, as well as the importance of mental health care. And he and his staff are determining his legislative priorities, shaped by his health challenges, and how to assist him with his lingering auditory processing challenges (lots of iPads with transcription services).

In his first week back, Fetterman said he’s prepared to serve his full term.

“Oh, my gosh, of course I have six years ... absolutely,” he said. “I want to be, to serve Pennsylvania, and I’m honored by the trust that they vested in me. ... I want to work to honor their trust.”

It was a typical week back in some ways — a few votes a day, committee hearings, constituent meetings. Atypical in others: Fetterman chaired his first subcommittee hearing just days after resuming work, and he’s meeting some newer staffers for the first time.

Still, his return was just one storyline in the Senate, which resumed Monday after a two-week recess. Reporters stopped lawmakers to ask about the debt limit, or a briefing on leaked Ukraine documents. And Fetterman wasn’t the only senator in the spotlight: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell also just returned after suffering a concussion, and Democrats are grappling with intensifying calls for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D, Calif.) to retire.

For Fetterman, the coming weeks will involve preparing for an office move and reacclimating to the Senate customs and logistics, all while continuing outpatient therapy for auditory processing.

The little stuff — forgetting his glasses and being late to a news conference, or getting stuck in a Capitol Subway tram car — bother him less now, he said, because of the tougher battle he’s winning.

“Being happy and having fun, that’s the adjustment,” Fetterman said in his subterranean temporary Senate office. “And interacting with people … now I enjoy it.”

As Fetterman stepped out of the SUV that had taken him from his Washington apartment to the Capitol on Monday, a crush of reporters and photographers waited. Wearing his signature black Carhartt hoodie and shorts, he didn’t respond to shouted questions (he still has trouble hearing in noisy environments) but put his hands over his chest in gratitude.

“It’s great to be back,” he said. “Thank you.”

Gratitude is overwhelming him these days. One of the first things he did when he got inside the building was join an all-staff meeting to thank his team.

Then he dropped off a Prantl’s almond torte and some beer for Sen. Bob Casey and the senior Pennsylvania senator’s staff, who had supported his own during his absence. Casey and Fetterman walked down to vote together — taking the long way past the cameras.

“I’m just amazed at how much better he sounds,” Casey said. “And how upbeat he was about not only the fact that he could come back, but also about the treatment he got. I think he’s gonna be in great shape to resume his work.”

Fetterman’s public battle with depression, which he announced when he checked into Walter Reed Medical Center on Feb. 15, in many ways marked a change in how the Senate talked about mental health. He received an avalanche of bipartisan support from colleagues who commended him for speaking out about an often stigmatized illness. Cards and doughnuts flooded his office. His disclosure prompted other lawmakers to speak about their own struggles with depression, which affects roughly 1 in 7 Americans and about a third of all stroke survivors.

Sen. Katie Britt, a Republican freshman senator from Alabama, who temporarily shared an office suite with Fetterman, has become a friend and visited him in the hospital, as did Casey.

“He’s given hope and strength to so many people in this country,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters this week after a one-on-one meeting with Fetterman.

During the heated campaign last year, which Fetterman says likely contributed to his depression, retiring Sen. Pat Toomey described the Senate as a place with “intense and sometimes informal, sometimes spontaneous communication.” He suggested that Fetterman might not be up to that, given lingering auditory processing and hearing loss following his stroke.

» READ MORE: From 2022: Sen. Toomey says Fetterman is ‘not up to the job’ of senator, pointing to lingering speech issues following his stroke

Those challenges remain, but Fetterman has a system in place to ensure that he can do the job. When he’s on the move, an aide trails him with an iPad equipped with transcription software so that he can fully understand any impromptu conversations. His office is equipped with flat-screen TVs displaying transcriptions of conversations. Over the course of the week, he spoke at a news conference, questioned administration nominees, met with constituents, and cochaired a subcommittee hearing.

He is still disconnected from the rapid-fire conversations between lawmakers and reporters in the hallways, but his chief of staff, Adam Jentleson, said Fetterman wants to engage more.

“He wants to be accessible and wants to answer questions and with a little trial and error, we’ll figure out a system,” Jentleson said. “He’s not gonna be hiding.”

A few of Fetterman’s staffers waited for him to speak at a news conference on a breezy spring morning. Some had just met “the big guy” that week, and others were getting to know him for the first time post-treatment. They listened as he joined fellow senators at the foot of the Capitol to announce legislation that would ban members of Congress from buying or trading stocks.

“Lawmakers should not be able to profit off of the same companies they are regulating,” he said at the news conference. “Lawmakers should be focused on getting results, not lining their own pockets.”

It was a brief statement that he might not have given before getting treated, Jentleson said. Fetterman still sometimes jumbles some words as a result of the stroke but he gets his message across.

“One thing that’s different in a big way from before — that stuff was very anxiety-inducing,” Jentleson said. “It’s hard to be grappling with clinical depression when everything you do is micro-analyzed and people make fun of every stutter and every mistake.”

Scrutiny of his speech continued this week when Fetterman chaired his first subcommittee hearing on agriculture food and nutrition on Wednesday. His at-times choppy speech was ridiculed by some on Twitter, which Fox compiled into an article.

The hearing was particularly timely, given a Republican plan to restrict some benefits to SNAP in the new Farm Bill.

“SNAP is one of the most effective programs to fight poverty and hunger,” Fetterman said at the hearing. “We need to come together and stop playing political games with Americans’ access to food.”

For Fetterman, the return to work is also about elevating some of the priorities he ran on — such as banning congressional stock ownership and protecting food assistance programs. Sometimes he can do that just by showing up. The ethics news conference, for instance, was covered by several Pennsylvania news organizations.

During his hospitalization, Fetterman didn’t miss many critical votes, but some nominations were put on hold, given the tightly divided chamber. At a hearing on banking, housing and urban affairs on Tuesday, he asked questions aimed at propping up three of President Joe Biden’s administrative nominees.

Coming off of leave also means a long list of constituents eager to meet with you. His week included a half-dozen meetings, including one with Michael Kovach, the head of the Pennsylvania farmers union. Kovach told him small-farm owners need help accessing federal subsidies. As he spoke, a flat-screen TV in the conference room displayed a transcript of the conversation.

“I think if we tripled the staffing at NRCS (National Resource Conservation Services) that would be a great start,” Kovach, a livestock farmer from Mercer County, told Fetterman. “And it would have to be folks with farming backgrounds but also the regulatory backgrounds. So it’d be a tall order.”

“So it would be telling family farmers that we are really listening and that they’re invested in my survival,” Fetterman said.

He asked Kovach to be a future witness in a hearing. Then an official Senate photographer sitting in on the meeting asked to get a photo of the two men, and Fetterman joked about them both having bald heads and gray beards.

Such little moments come as a huge relief to his staff, who saw him at his lowest point, when he wasn’t eating or engaging at all. Fetterman’s expression as he walks the Senate halls may still be the scowl he was known for long before his health challenges, but one-on-one, he’s bantering more, connecting with people.

He’s even joking about the (false) internet theory that he has a body double.

“He has a steadiness and a positivity that was certainly not there before,” Jentleson said.

When Fetterman left Walter Reed, he brought with him a collection of post-it notes his children had plastered on his hospital wall: pink and yellow squares filled with words of encouragement. “You will get better.” “Best dad ever.”

Fetterman also has a new wedding ring to mark 15 years married to Gisele, who he said helped him through the toughest year of their marriage. The Braddock-made silver band is from Studebaker Metals, inscribed G&J 15.

As he looks to the year ahead, Fetterman said his goal is exactly what he ran on — to hold the line for Democrats and Biden. He also wants to find ways to improve access to the kind of excellent mental health care he received. He gets choked up thinking about the people who don’t have that support.

“Before my treatment compared to now is beyond black and white, dark and day,” he said. “I’m so grateful, and I would plead [with] anybody: If you or someone that you love — a friend, anybody — please do something about it, because treatment works and you don’t have to suffer through that.”

For now, his staff is still in a basement windowless office waiting for their permanent space to open up next month. It’s cramped, across from where they print the Senate stationery, with low ceilings and bad lighting. Recently, Fetterman figured out the trip he’s been taking underground only takes about 10 minutes walking outside.

“He realized we’d been going back and forth in these basement tunnels,” Jentleson said. “And he was like, ‘Why aren’t we walking outside? The trees are in bloom.’”