Kathie Lee Gifford discusses 'painful' recovery from surgery: 'This is serious'

Kathie Lee Gifford had no idea hip replacement surgery would be such a big deal.

The former talk show host assumed her extremely active lifestyle would help her body in the recovery process after doctors operated, and thought recuperating would be "easy" post surgery.

Gifford, 70, told People magazine, that the experience has been "one of the most painful situations of my entire life." 

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She added, "It's been really hard."

Following her procedure, Gifford "jumped off that gurney after my surgery," but quickly realized her body — unlike her mind — wasn't prepared for a slower change of pace.

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"I walked, I climbed, I walked, and my doctor said, ‘Kathie, no. You have got to realize that this is serious,'" she said. 

Gifford boasted that she was "off my walker in two days" and was then off all of her medication in three days, but "then I did too much. I just did too much because that's who I am." 

"I started carrying books around and signing and getting ready, and my grandchildren came to visit," she said. 

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"And you can't. I have learned from this that you can only do so much. You're just human. You're just human. And I'm so grateful."

Her procedure was necessary as Gifford noted her "hips [were] down to the nubs," something doctors told her was due to her incredibly active lifestyle.

"You climbed mountains, you made movies, you got on stages. You never took off your high heels, and you kept going and that's why you're going through what you're going through," she remembered specialists telling her.

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Despite that, Gifford has no regrets about why she needed surgery, or the difficult recovery process.

"[I ask myself] would I change that? No, I was doing what God put me on this Earth to do. Every year of it, I was doing what He called me to do," she said.

In the early 1980s, she began working as a "Good Morning America" correspondent, and in 1985, she joined Regis Philbin to host "The Morning Show" on a local New York City station. Three years later, the show was launched nationally as "Live! With Regis and Kathie Lee," and she's been a household name ever since.