Actress Miriam Margolyes updated fans on her health after recent heart surgery.
The national treasure, 82, opened up on Jessie and Lennie Ware’s podcast Table Manners.
Miriam said: “I’ve got a cow’s heart now. Well, not the whole heart. I’ve had an aortic valve replaced by a cow’s aortic valve. I don’t know how common it is. I’d never heard of that operation. But it saves you for having open heart surgery which would be infinitely more invasive.”
Miriam Margolyes details surgery
In fact the Harry Potter actress went into great detail about how the operation works. She explained: “They made two little holes in your groin. One in each groin and then they shoved this thing through.
“And then when it comes to the point when it’s in your heart, they pull a little string and it goes pow! And lo and behold, your artery or your aortic valve is shoved unceremoniously to the side.”
Miriam also said: “When you get old… I have a bad back. I’ll probably be in a wheelchair soon. You have to come to terms with what life throws at you.”
It’s not the first time Miriam has opened up about her health. In September she revealed that she’d spent time “resting” in hospital following a chest infection. She also suffers from spinal stenosis, where space around the spinal cord becomes too marrow, compressing the nerves.
It means she now sometimes uses walking sticks and a mobility scooter, and Miriam blames her weight for the mobility issues.
Miriam told Elizabeth Day on her podcast How To Fail: “I’ve limited my life because of my longing for fudge or chopped liver, cheesecake. All these absurdities. I shouldn’t have been so greedy.”
Miriam is still at work
Still, nothing is stopping Miriam from her busy schedule. She posed nude for Vogue magazine in July and has also been in Australia filming Miriam Margolyes: Australia Unmasked for BBC2.
Chatting to Holly Willoughby and Josie Gibson on This Morning recently, Miriam revealed that she’d indulged in some Gwyneth Paltrow style treatments while Down Under.
Miriam admitted: “I steamed my yoni! And it did me the world of good. It was very nice. And I think it awaked something that had been rather slumbering for a while. But on the whole, sex is not for me now.”
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