Rene Boucher ambushed his neighbor Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on Nov. 3, 2017 while he was mowing his lawn, leaving the lawmaker with six broken ribs and a bruised lung. Politics reportedly did not motivate Boucher's surprise attack. It was a “property dispute that had finally boiled over,” court documents read.
Paul, who is suing Boucher for $4,000 in medical costs, last January, told CBS News that his injuries had kept him in "living hell."
"It was sort of, I guess, a living hell for the first four or five weeks," he shared. "Couldn't get out of bed without assistance, six broken ribs, damage to my lungs, two bouts of pneumonia. It was really a tough go of it. But each day I feel a little bit better. This last month I've been doing better."
We know he's not exaggerating because on Monday we learned that the senator is having to undergo hernia surgery at the end of this month in Canada.
He is scheduled to have the operation at the Shouldice Hernia Hospital in Thornhill, Ontario the week of Jan. 21, according to documents from Paul's civil lawsuit against Boucher, the Courier Journal reports.
Unbelievably, some media are criticizing Paul's trip to Canada for medical care, considering his long history of speaking out against socialized medicine. "Rand Paul, who calls universal health care slavery, will have surgery in Canada but insists hospital is private," a Newsweek headline read.
Other reporters couldn't help but note his opposition to socialized medicine too.
GOP Sen Rand Paul, a fierce critic of socialized medicine, will travel to Canada this month to get hernia surgery: Louisville Courier-Journalhttps://t.co/tGmeUpM4w4
— Laura Litvan (@LauraLitvan) January 14, 2019
Kelsey Cooper, a spokeswoman for Senator Paul, defended the senator's decision, explaining that the hospital is privately owned.
"This is a private, world-renowned hospital separate from any system, and people come from around the world to pay cash for their services,” she explained.
Furthermore, as The Hill observed, Shouldice Hernia Hospital is "the only licensed hospital in the world dedicated to repairing hernias," according to its website.
Before having been attacked by his neighbor, Sen. Paul was one of the Republican lawmakers on the field in Alexandria, VA when an attacker opened fire on their congressional baseball practice. Paul escaped without any physical trauma, but his friend and colleague Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) was shot in the abdomen and had to undergo weeks surgeries before he could even step foot again in the halls of Congress.