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Rosie O'Donnell: My wife kept me alive after heart attack

Oct 17, 2012, 16:01 GMT

Rosie O\'Donnell and Michelle Rounds

Rosie O'Donnell's wife saved her life.

The TV talk show host suffered a heart attack in August and thinks her spouse Michelle Rounds' quick thinking in making her take an aspirin meant the ordeal didn't turn out as badly as it could have been.

She revealed: 'She gave me an aspirin, thank God! The doctor [said it was] vital to me staying [alive] through the night, because I didn't go to the hospital right away and I should've.

'I'm thinking the kids, 'Where are the kids going to go? Let's just put some ice on me. I probably just pulled a muscle.' '

Despite Rosie, 50, believing her problems initially weren't serious, Michelle thought it best to check online whether it could be something else.

She said: 'I thought, well, let me Google the symptoms and sure enough she had almost every one of them.'

After finding out later that one of her arteries was 99 percent blocked, Rosie has learnt to put herself first and take better care of herself.

She added to 'Access Hollywood': 'I think we have to learn to treat ourselves better and to put ourselves first and to save our lives in the end.

'It's been a rough year, I can tell you that. I feel a lot better. I think that I became educated after having a heart attack... I wasn't really prepared or ready and even while I was having a heart attack, I kept going, 'You think this could be a heart attack?' '