Arnold Schwarzenegger recently opened up about a disastrous unplanned open-heart surgery he underwent back in 2018 that almost cost him his life. The 76-year-old Terminator actor and bodybuilder went into detail about the incident in a candid video posted to his YouTube channel, The Pump, which is part of his health and fitness group, Arnold’s Pump Club.
In the video called Starting from Scratch: Coming Back from Heart Surgery, the former Governor of California told fans he was supposed to undergo non-invasive open-heart surgery for the third time back in 2018. But when he woke up, he said he was told by doctors that they had “made a mistake” during the surgery and had to open him up to “save” his life.
Arnold Schwarzenegger Recalls ‘Disastrous’ 2018 Heart Surgery
“I remember when I had my open-heart surgery, my third one… I was really freaking out, and I woke up all of the 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,'” Schwarzenegger recalled.
He continued: “The bottom line is, you cannot roll the clock back. I was in the middle of a disaster… so now it’s about, ‘how do I get out of it?’ You have to shift gears.”
The Predator actor went on to say that he wanted to make an extra-speedy recovery from the operation, as he was due to start filming Terminator: Dark Fate just a few months later. He explained that he knew that the first step was to get himself fit and healthy enough to get discharged from the hospital as soon as possible, so he could get back to training for the movie.
"[That meant] getting out of bed and start walking. First 10 steps, then longer and longer," he explained, before going on to say, "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.'"
Arnold Schwarzenegger Credits His 'Support System' For Helping Him Recover
"And this is what we did, every day," the True Lies actor continued. "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."
"Because three months later, I started with Terminator 6, so I had to be in shape," he continued, adding, "I had to be able to move around, run around, lift things up, do the fight scene, all these things. And I did it! Because I had a positive attitude and knew exactly how I was going to get there." He finished off by thanking his "support system," adding, "because none of this we can do by ourselves... When I started shooting Terminator 6, I was all back together again."
