Arnie has emergency open-heart surgery

Hollywoodaction star Arnold Schwarzenegger is in a stable condition afterundergoing emergency open-heart surgery, celebrity news website TMZreported yesterday.The 70-year-old actor turned activist – popularlyknown as “Arnie” – was in a Los Angeles hospital on Thursday to have apulmonic valve replaced and developed complications, the gossip portalsaid, citing unnamed Schwarzenegger sources.Doctors rushed theTerminator and Predator star into the operating theatre for open-heartsurgery, operating for several hours, TMZ said.The originalreplacement pulmonic valve, which Schwarzenegger received in 1997,outlasted its life expectancy, so the former California governor choseto have valve replacement by catheter, spokesman Daniel Ketchell said ina statement on Twitter.He was recovering and in stable condition at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles, the statement said.Schwarzenegger “is awake and his first words were actually ‘I’m back’”, Ketchell said.Schwarzenegger’s character famously says “I’ll be back” in his breakthrough role in the 1984 movie The Terminator.Bornin Austria, Schwarzenegger won the Mr Universe bodybuilding contestfive times and Mr Olympia seven times before turning to acting, starringin action movies such as Conan the Barbarian and Commando.He then went into politics, and was elected governor of California as a Republican in 2003 and 2006.Schwarzeneggerunderwent non-urgent heart surgery 21 years ago to have an aortic valvereplaced, due to a condition that he said was congenital and nothing todo with steroids.He revealed in his book Total Recall: MyUnbelievably True Life Story that he initially kept that first operationa secret from his wife, Maria Shriver, by telling her he was onvacation in Mexico.In an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes, he saidthat his doctor told him he was “crazy” when he said he planned to keepthe operation quiet from Shriver.“He said ‘your wife is pregnant, what do you mean you are not going to tell her?’” Schwarzenegger recalled.“Itold him: ‘Here is the plan, I am going to have the heart surgery, youdo it quietly, no one knows about it, we do it at six in the morning.Four days later I am out of here and I go to Mexico and I will tellMaria I am down here, a little busy and I am on vacation, when I comeback I’ll be tanned and no one will know’.”The Austrian-born formerbodybuilder was voted in as governor of California in a historic 2003recall vote – but proved the win was no fluke by routing opponent PhilAngelides to get re-elected.