Arnold Schwarzenegger, longtime actor and occasional politician, has joined the ranks of cybernetic organism. The 76 year-old star of the Terminator recently became part-man part-machine when he had himself fitted with a pacemaker to assist with problems stemming a congenital heart defect. The same defect claimed the lives of his mother and grandmother.
He revealed his new status on the March 25th episode of Arnold’s Pump Club, his podcast. The surgery, he said, means he has to take a break from the daily workout routine that he’s adhered to religiously since he was a teenager. Talking about the issue was uncomfortable for him, he revealed, as medical issues are part of the private sphere in his native Austria, to the extent where one doesn’t always share such things with family.
Nonetheless, this isn’t the first time his health has been in the news. Over the past several years Schwarzenegger has had a series of surgeries to replace the defective heart valve he was born with. Rather than letting a press release tell the tale of his surgery, the action superstar decided to discuss the matter openly after an influx of emails and messages from others who had been born with the same heart defect—a bicuspid aortic valve—telling him that news of his valve replacement surgeries, which have happened periodically over the last several years, had helped them muster up the courage to face their own surgeries.
The surgery was carried out at the Cleaveland Clinic, and the actor had high praise for the doctors and nurses who attended to him. He was feeling so well by the end of the week of the surgery that he was able to attend an environmental activism event with Jane Fonda.
The pacemaker, he revealed, was installed because previous surgeries had left the star with an irregular heartbeat, which was discovered during one of his annual check-ups following his valve replacement surgery.
