Jimmy Kimmels 7-Year-Old Son Undergoes His Third Open Heart Surgery

Transcript

00:00 "Billy was born with a heart disease and the operation was a success. It was the

00:08 longest three hours of my life. He'll have to have another open heart surgery

00:11 in three to six months to close those holes, but they want to wait until he's

00:15 bigger and then he'll have a third hopefully non-invasive procedure

00:18 sometime maybe in his early teens to replace the valve he has now." Seven years

00:23 later, Jimmy Kimmel reveals his son Billy has already undergone his third open

00:28 heart surgery. "You know people I think they're very hesitant to ask me about him

00:33 and they're like is he okay?" The late-night host sharing a health update

00:37 alongside this sweet photo of the seven-year-old smiling big in his

00:41 hospital bed. Jimmy writing in the caption, "This weekend our boy Billy had

00:45 his third of three we hope open heart surgery. We went into this experience

00:50 with a lot of optimism and nearly as much fear and came out with a new valve

00:55 inside a happy healthy kid." "Billy's doing great. He's perfectly normal. I shouldn't

01:00 say he's normal. He's not a normal kid. He's a weird kid, but his heart is fine.

01:04 It's just he's a little screwy. That's all we're worried about right now." In

01:08 2017, Jimmy emotionally shared on his late-night show that Billy underwent his

01:13 first open heart surgery at just three days old. "It's a terrifying thing.

01:19 You know my wife is back in the recovery room. She has no idea what's going on and

01:24 I'm standing in the middle of a lot of very worried looking people kind of like

01:29 right now who are trying to figure out what the problem is. This is what he

01:34 looked like on Monday, but this is what he looked like yesterday."

01:41 People have never forgotten that night. You touched so many people. Is that

01:45 something you always remember? "Yeah, how could you forget something like

01:49 that? I mean that's it was people were so nice and people still are so nice.

01:52 Everybody, you know, they come up to me to ask me how Billy is and then you know

01:57 and it's it's really nice to see to get that from people and I think it's the

02:02 result of just being on television for many years and you feel like you know

02:06 somebody and and it you know people say they're praying it means a lot." Since

02:13 then, Jimmy's shared his gratitude for the medical team at Children's Hospital

02:16 Los Angeles who have been there since the start of Billy's journey. "Children's

02:22 Hospital here in Los Angeles is it's just a great place for parents to bring

02:27 their kids when it's needed, but also it's a great place because they train

02:32 doctors and nurses from not just all around the country, go all around the

02:37 world. So it really it's a place where they come they learn how to do this and

02:42 and it helps everybody across the whole country not just in LA. Honestly, he's

02:48 no different physically than any of the other kids. He can play sports, he

02:52 doesn't want to, but he can. He, you know, he's always dancing and jumping around

02:56 and we wrestle all the time, but he's fine. You know, he's really, except for

03:02 what's going on with his heart, he's perfectly fine."

03:08 you

03:10 (music fades)