Jimmy Kimmel is making a public statement on the health of his son Billy.
Through an interview with Entertainment Tonight that was published on Monday, July 8, the host of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, who is 56 years old, disclosed information on the health of his son William “Billy” John, who is seven years old and had undergone his third open-heart surgery in May.
Mr. Billy is doing quite well. “He had open-heart surgery; you know he’s got the scars and everything, but he’s just mentally right back where he was, which is crazy,” Kimmel said of his son, who was born in 2017 with a congenital heart ailment. Kimmel’s kid was born with a heart defect.
He proceeded by saying, “Physically, you know, we’re going to have to be careful with him for a couple of months, but he’s doing really well.”
Kimmel continued by saying, “They’re made of rubber, you know, everybody says that kids are so resilient, and the doctors actually explained it to me, which I don’t know why it never occurred to me before because they’re still growing.” Kimmel was answering a question regarding the resiliency of children.
Kimmel, who has a daughter named Katie, 32, and a son named Kevin, 30, with his first wife Gina Maddy, uploaded a picture of Billy smiling while he was in a hospital bed in the month of May. Billy and his daughter Jane, who is nine years old, are shared by Kimmel with his wife Molly McNearney.
After then, he disclosed in the caption that Billy had successfully completed his third open-heart operation.
“This weekend, our boy Billy had his third (of three, we hope) open heart surgery,” he wrote at the time, describing it as a “humbling experience.” Billy had just had these procedures.
“We went into this experience with a lot of optimism and nearly as much fear, and we came out with a new valve inside of a happy, healthy kid,” Kimmel added, before expressing gratitude to the medical professionals, strangers, family, and friends who had helped him through this ordeal.
“Thank you to my wife Molly for being stronger than is reasonable for any mother to be, and Billy, you are the toughest (and funniest) seven-year-old we know,” the father of four children said. “I am overwhelmed with gratitude.”