Arnold Schwarzenegger Health Shocker: Actor Had Pacemaker Put in Earlier This Month Due to an 'Irregular Heartbeat'
Arnold Schwarzenegger is one step closer to becoming the Terminator in real life!
On a new episode of his "Arnold's Pump Club" podcast, the actor revealed he had a pacemaker put in earlier this month.
"Last Monday, I had surgery to become a little bit more of a machine. I got a pacemaker," he told his listeners. "I have to tell you, just saying this to all of you goes against so much of my upbringing in Austria, where nobody ever talked about medical issues. Anything related to healthcare was kept to yourself."
The muscle man, 76, said he decided to go public with the operation because "I’ve gotten so many messages and emails from people who were born with a bicuspid aortic valve, like me, telling me that talking about my valve replacement surgeries has given them courage and hope to deal with their own."
The father-of-five said he's "doing great," and just a few days after the procedure, he was able to attend a "big environmental event with my friend and fellow fitness crusader Jane Fonda."
Schwarzenegger gave a special shoutout to his doctors for taking "amazing care" of him and making "the surgery as painless as possible."
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Schwarzenegger explained he was encouraged to have the surgery "because some scar tissue from my previous surgery had made my heartbeat irregular." Over the years, he's undergone three open heart procedures.
Last year, the former bodybuilder detailed his third open heart surgery in 2018, which included a terrifying moment.
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"I was really freaking out, and I woke up all of a sudden and the doctor was standing in front of me, and saying 'I'm so sorry, but unlike what we planned, a non-invasive surgery ... we made a mistake and poked through the heart wall, and there was internal bleeding, and we had to open [you] up to save your life,'" he recalled in a video he recorded for his YouTube channel.
The former governor of California said he relied on his friends to help motivate him in his recovery.
"I called my buddies in and said, 'You guys have to fire me up. You have to count the number of steps that I'm doing.' And this is what we did, everyday," he shared. "Everybody came into the hospital, they said, 'OK, Arnold, it's time to get up!' I wanted to get really going with the exercise, get out of the hospital as quick as possible, and then get going with the training again."