During his speech on healthcare reform on Monday, U.S. President Barack Obama caught a pregnant lady beginning to faint behind him, and then joked: “That's what happens when I talk too long.”
About 25 minutes into the speech at the Rose Garden of the White House, the president reached out to help the woman after she appeared visibly woozy and became unsteady, seemingly starting to lose consciousness.
Sensing a disturbance, Obama paused his speech to turn and grab her arm before she fainted. “I gotcha, you’re OK,” he can be heard telling the woman in a video of the event.
He then turned to the audience, and joked: “That's what happens when I talk too long.”
The woman, prospective Affordable Care Act beneficiary Karmel Allison, later tweeted: “I'm ok world- just got a little lightheaded. Thanks, @BarackObama for catching me! And good thing this pregnant diabetic is pregnant :)”
Obama had been discussing the glitches of the new healthcare website.
Allison was invited to the event at the White House because she has suffered Type 1 Diabetes since she was nine years old and has always struggled to find affordable healthcare, according to U.S. media reports.
After the speech, she told CNN she was “feeling much better.”
“I'm 20 weeks pregnant at this point and I hadn't had that much to drink that morning because I was worried about possibly needing to go to the bathroom during the speech,” she said in a phone interview. “And as the sun hit me, I got a little lightheaded.”
