Arnold Schwarzenegger: My life-threatening heart surgery | Trending Now

0:00Hey everybody, it's Graham and it's Friday, which means today we get to bring you another trending clip. What you're about to listen to is trending this week on our Facebook page. Hope you enjoy. This week, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

0:19What happened after filming True Lies that made you realize you needed a heart operation? First of all, when you talk about the heart operation, my mother had a heart problem. And so I took her to UCLA one day, this was in the late 70s, where they told her that she has a valve problem. As a matter of fact, two of her valves didn't really work well. And that she may down the line need a valve replacement. And they also told her, they asked her, I said, did your mother or someone in your family have that? and she said, which was the first time I kind of heard that, was, yeah, my mother had a valve problem and she died with the age of 67.

1:05And so they said, well, you know, it's obviously something that is being passed down. I said, Arnold, you better get your heart checked regularly because this could also happen to you. And so from that point on, every year, I had my heart checked when I had my physical. And so when I was finished with True Lies, I remember the doctor at that physical said, you know, the time is coming up where I see your heart, the performance going down, that you need soon a valve replacement. So I said to him, I said, well, you know, why don't I just do, let's do it in two years from now. And he says, it's fine.

1:46And right after the Batman and Robin movie, I went into the hospital and got the valve replacement, got both valves replaced, the aortic valve and the pulmonary valve. What was the risk involved with that? And what did the doctor come into your room and say at 3 a.m. the morning after surgery? Well, because I got the RAS procedure, which is where they take one of your own valves and put it in the aortic position. So the pulmonary valve is really normally not strong enough to take over the aortic position and to that pressure, blood pressure. So it was clear that at that point there's a 60 % chance that it works and the 40 % chance that it won't work.

2:29So what happened was is that the pressure was too enormous and my body was too big and too strong. And it also didn't help that right after I woke up from the surgery I went on the life and started riding the life cycle with auto machines and it's still connected to me. So that didn't help either. But the bottom line was that it failed and that I started coughing and I started kind of choking and not getting any air and there was fluid going in the lungs and all this. And at 3 in the morning the doctor came to me and said, the surgery failed. Then two hours from now we have to do it again. and now it gets very dangerous.

3:13You have to do two surgeries within 24 hours like that. You know, it's like first they tell you there's a 6 % chance of failure that you wipe out and now all of a sudden that doubles because of 12%. So I don't have to tell you that if you have a gun to your head that has, you know, 100 chambers and there's 12 bullets in there, I don't think anyone wants to take the risk when you spin it, that it's going to be clean. So it was a wild thing to be, a situation to be in. But being under the amount of drugs that you're under at that point, you really don't care. You know, it's like, okay, just do it.

3:57Did you think there was a chance that could be it? Yeah, absolutely. It was a disastrous situation to be in, nevertheless. And I could see when they prepped me for the surgery at 5 in the morning that their attitude was quite different than the day before when they prepped me for the first surgery. It was all kind of like easygoing and dancing around and being funny. They were already in the operation room where the music is on and all that stuff. This time it was serious, serious business. I could feel that even though I was high on drugs. and so luckily it all turned out well and he did a dr.

4:37Starnes did a great job in redoing it and now 19 years later I still have the same valves and did everything is standing fine as always thanks for listening to see more trending clips from my team go to youtube.com slash Graham Ben singer