Photo: David Shankbone.
Rosie O’Donnell revealed in a blog post Monday that she suffered a heart attack last Tuesday morning while helping free a woman who was stuck in her car, according to the post.
“I am happy to be alive,” said O’Donnell, 50, in the post, titled “my heart attack” in which she applied her often-used verse poetry form. “Last week I had a heart attack.”
The comedian and talk show host’s blog entry goes on to detail how the heart attack happened, saying that she was helping “an enormous woman” who was struggling to get out of a car after hearing the woman’s pleas for help near her home in New York. O’Donnell said that she lifted the woman, freeing her from the vehicle and that her chest began to ache a few hours later.
Both of hear arms became sore, and at one point, she vomited. O’Donnell, however, suspected the pain to be related to the heart attack hours later when she searched for symptoms online, realized that she was experiencing many of them and took some aspirin, according to the post.
The next day, O’Donnell was sent to a hospital after a cardiologist determined that 99 percent of her left anterior descending artery (LAD) was blocked, requiring doctors to insert a stent to clear the blockage.
“They call this type of heart attack/the Widow maker,” O’Donnell said in the post. “I am lucky to be here.”
The same type of heart attack killed famed television journalist and “Meet the Press” host, Timothy Russert in 2008. An estimated 200,000 women die of heart attacks every year.
In March, O’Donnell returned to New York City after filming her Oprah Winfrey Network talk show “The Rosie Show” in Chicago for five months before it was cancelled due to low ratings.
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