Jimmy Kimmel shares wild hawk homecoming from the hospital after son's heart surgery
Late night host Jimmy Kimmel shared an update in his opening monologue Wednesday about his 7-year-old son's third successful open heart surgery, including video footage of a wild homecoming from the hospital.
Kimmel, 56, first shared the latest news of his son Billy's medical procedure via Instagram, before opening up further on-air.
"After an extra extra long holiday weekend we spent most of it at Children's Hospital [Los Angeles]. Our son Billy had an open heart surgery, he's doing very well," Kimmel began to a crowd of applause.
"Thank you Cleo for the Edible Arrangment," he continued, speaking to the lead member of his house band, adding, "Let me tell you something, if there's one thing a 7-year-old boy loves it's an Edible Arrangement."
"We went in the hospital on Thursday morning and we got home Monday and not even an hour after we walk in the house, from the hospital with our son, this happens," he said rolling a video clip his wife Molly recorded in their kitchen as her husband was seen holding a broom and attempting to encourage a hawk that had flown inside to fly back out.
The bird of prey fumbled in the corner of glass windows as Kimmel attempted to usher it toward a window before the hawk flew across the kitchen, at which point both parents asked Billy to go upstairs before the bird eventually flew out the sliding glass door.
"Welcome home Billy," his mom said as he looked on from the staircase.
Kimmel also recalled that on the day of Billy's surgery, his wife "saw a mourning dove -- and is apparently an omen of death and she was very freaked out by it," he said. "We get home from the hospital and the hawk flies in and kills the mourning dove, kills the omen of death."
Kimmel garnered a lot of attention in 2017 when he tearfully recounted on "Jimmy Kimmel Live" the terrifying moment he learned about his son's heart defect.
"They did an echocardiogram, which is a sonogram of the heart, and found that Billy was born with a heart disease," Kimmel said on-air at the time.
Doctors diagnosed Billy's condition as Tetralogy of Fallot and, at just 3 days old, he had open heart surgery to repair it.
"The pulmonary valve was completely blocked, and he has a hole in the wall between the left and right sides of his heart," Kimmel said of the condition at the time.
Seven months later, after a second heart surgery, when Kimmel gave the world an update on his son's health, he took the opportunity to speak out on the fight for affordable health care.
"No parent should ever have to decide if they can afford to save their child's life," Kimmel said on his show. "It just shouldn't happen. Not here."
Earlier this week, in his post on Instagram, Kimmel wrote, "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."
