page_title: Ronald Reagan
section_title: Health issues
hierarchical_section_title: Ronald Reagan / Post-presidency, 1989-2004 / Health issues
caption_attribution_description: English: Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev relax at Reagan's California ranch. President Reagan gave this cowboy hat to Mikhail Gorbachev, which he promptly put on backwards.
context_page_description: Ronald Wilson Reagan was an American actor and politician. He was the 40th President of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He was the 33rd Governor of California from 1967 to 1975. Reagan was the 9th and 13th President of the Screen Actors Guild, from 1947 to 1952 and again from 1959 to 1960. Reagan was a movie, television and radio actor before he began his career in politics.
  Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois. Reagan had a successful career in Hollywood. He was in fifty-three movies. He married actress Jane Wyman in 1940. The couple divorced in 1949. They had three children. Reagan then married Nancy Davis in 1952. They had two children. Their marriage lasted until Reagan's death in 2004.
  Before winning his presidental election in 1980, Reagan ran for president two times in 1968 and in 1976. At 73 years old when re-elected in 1984, he is the oldest person elected president of the United States. He is known as the "Great Communicator" because he was a good public speaker. Reagan was also known as the "Teflon president" because any criticism or scandals against him never stuck or affected his popularity.
context_section_description: Early in his presidency, Reagan started wearing a hearing aid, first in his right ear and later in his left as well. In 1985, he had colon cancer and skin cancer removed at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. In 1987, Reagan had surgery to remove polyp of the nose. Also in that year, Reagan went into surgery for an enlarged prostate.
  In 1994, Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.
  On November 5, 1994, Reagan wrote a public letter about having Alzheimer's disease, writing:
  I have recently been told that I am one of the millions of Americans who will be afflicted with Alzheimer's Disease... At the moment I feel just fine. I intend to live the remainder of the years God gives me on this earth doing the things I have always done... I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead. Thank you, my friends. May God always bless you.
  After announcing his disease, many people sent supporting letters to his California home. There was also an opinion based on unfinished evidence that Reagan had showed symptoms of mental decline while still in office.
  In 1995, the Ronald and Nancy Reagan Research Institute was dedicated in Chicago, Illinois. It is an institution that can help people with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.
  Reagan fell at his Bel Air home on January 13, 2001. He broke his hip. The fracture was repaired the next day. Reagan, 89 years old, returned home later that week, but he then had to do difficult physical therapy at home.
caption: Reagan with Gorbachev at Reagan's ranch, Rancho del Cielo, 1992
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