Rosie O’Donnell is looking back at the massive heart attack she suffered a decade ago.
O’Donnell, 61, was the guest on the most recent “The Best Podcast Ever” chatting with hosts Raven Symoné and Miranda Pearman-Maday and she discussed the day of the attack.
“I should’ve died,” she told the podcast.
O’Donnell explained she was actually in a hospital parking lot to pick up a friend when a stranger asked her for some help.
“She said ‘Rosie, will you help me up?’ So I went over and I helped her up and it took a lot longer than I expected,” she said. “I got home and my arms were hurting. I thought, ‘That’s funny, it must’ve been from pushing her up.’ So I went about my business.”
“I was in my little art studio and my son, who was only young at the time, said to me, ‘Mommy you look like a ghost,’” she continued.
She then searched “women’s heart attack signs” and had a number but wasn’t concerned.
“The truth of the matter is, I had this heart attack on a Monday at 10am,” she said. “I get home, I can hardly walk upstairs. I take two baby aspirin, I go to sleep, I wake up and my family goes, ‘You have to go to the doctor.’ I waited until the next day. So I had it on Monday and on Wednesday I saw a doctor.”
She said she went to a cardiologist instead of the emergency room and couldn’t fathom she was having a massive heart attack.
“I was like, ‘Wait, wait, what?’ I couldn’t believe it,” she said.
Once arriving at the hospital doctors found she had a 100% blockage of her left anterior descending artery. She had an emergency operation to put in a stent, which saved her life.
“It forced me into my body and to be in touch with my body in a way that I never had been,” she said.