LOS ANGELES — Late night talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel said his 7-year-old son underwent his third open-heart surgery during the Memorial Day weekend.
The “Late Night With Jimmy Kimmel!” host, 56, posted an update about his son, Billy, on his Instagram account on Monday. He shares the boy with his wife, Molly McNearney.
“We went into this experience with a lot of optimism and nearly as much fear and came out with a new valve inside a happy, healthy kid,” he wrote. “Walking around this hospital, meeting parents at their most vulnerable, children in pain and the miracle workers who do everything in their considerable power to save them is a humbling experience.”
Billy had the surgery at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, KABC-TV reported.
Shortly after his son was born in 2017, Jimmy Kimmel spoke about the boy’s congenital heart defect and his open-heart surgery when he was only three days old, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The initial surgery went well, but Kimmel said at the time that Billy would need at least two more surgeries in the future, ABC News reported.
“If your baby is going to die, and it doesn’t have to, it should not matter how much money you make,” Kimmel said during an emotional monologue after the boy’s birth, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The boy had his second heart surgery in December 2017, when he was 7 months old, “Today” reported.
In his Instagram post, Kimmel thanked his wife for “being stronger than is reasonable for any Mom to be,” and called Billy “the toughest (and funniest) 7-year-old we know.”
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