Jimmy Kimmel Praises ‘Toughest (And Funniest)’ Son Following Third Open-Heart Surgery
Jimmy Kimmel revealed Monday on Instagram that his 7-year-old son, Billy, had successfully undergone a third — and what the late-night host said will hopefully be his final — open-heart surgery.
“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,” Kimmel captioned a photo of Billy in his hospital bed.
“Thank you to my wife Molly [McNearney] for being stronger than is reasonable for any Mom to be and Billy, you are the toughest (and funniest) 7 year-old we know,” he added.
Kimmel also expressed his gratitude to the medical team at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. See the full post here:
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Billy was born in 2017 with a rare heart condition known as Tetralogy of Fallot with pulmonary atresia. He underwent emergency open-heart surgery at just 3 days old and then had another major operation at 8 months old.
Kimmel’s emotional recollection on his “Jimmy Kimmel Live” show of his son’s first few days — which included a passionate plea to Congress to ensure universal access to health care and a condemnation of then-President Donald Trump’s proposed health care funding cuts — went viral.
“If your baby is going to die and it doesn’t have to, it shouldn’t matter how much money you make,” Kimmel said at the time. “I think that’s something that whether you’re a Republican or Democrat or something else, we all agree on that, right?”
“We need to make sure that the people who are supposed to represent us ― the people who are meeting about this right now in Washington ― understand that very clearly,” he added. “Let’s stop with the nonsense. This isn’t football. There are no teams. We are the team. It’s the United States. Don’t let their partisan squabbles divide us on something every decent person wants.”
Watch Kimmel’s monologue from 2017 here:
Kimmel’s message drew praise from former President Barack Obama, who wrote on X-then-Twitter that it was “exactly why we fought so hard for the ACA, and why we need to protect it for kids like Billy.”
Well said, Jimmy. That’s exactly why we fought so hard for the ACA, and why we need to protect it for kids like Billy. And congratulations! https://t.co/77F8rZrD3P
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) May 2, 2017
