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Larry King Reveals He Was in a Coma After Suffering a Stroke, Hopes to Be ‘Walking by Christmas’

Road to recovery. Larry King revealed in an interview with ExtraTV that he was in a coma for “a couple weeks” after suffering a stroke in March.

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“I had a stroke,” King, 86, said at his birthday celebration at the Friars Club in New York City on Monday, November 25. “Everything got better except my left foot and I have been rehabbing that every day, and they tell me I’ll be walking by Christmas. Not bad, I can walk with a walker, too.”

The Larry King Now host added, “It’s been a rough year, I don’t remember anything since March – I had the stroke in March. I haven’t driven a car, but I’m back at work and that makes me feel great. It’s been a long, hard ride. My head doctor said I have an incomparable spirit.”

Larry King Reveals He Was in a Coma After Suffering a Stroke, Hopes to Be ‘Walking by Christmas’
Larry King attends The National Film and Television Awards in Los Angeles, CA on December 5, 2018. MediaPunch/Shutterstock

This is the second time King has been hospitalized this year. In April, he underwent a heart procedure after he suffered an angina attack. The former Larry King Live host’s heart problems date back to 1987 when he suffered a major heart attack and underwent quadruple bypass surgery.

King privately dealt with another health issue in 2017 when he exclusively told Us Weekly he was secretly diagnosed with lung cancer.

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“I go for my checkup and they say, ‘Let’s do a chest X-ray, and the doctor said to me, ‘Something looks funny,’” the PoliticKING with Larry King host recalled. “They said the spot looked pretty small. … I then did a CAT scan then a PET scan and then he said to me, ‘You have lung cancer, but it looks very small, in the beginning stages.’”

King underwent surgery at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles in July 2017 before returning to work just two weeks later. He told Us that after decades of achievements, he still had one more thing he’d like to accomplish.

“I’ve done everything I can do,” he said at the time.“I’ve done comedy, stand-up, I tell stories, I’ve written 15 books, I have done television [and] radio. I would like to do six months on Broadway. I’d like to do an evening with Larry King where I tell stories and take questions from the audience. … That would be on my bucket list.”

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He joked, “I will probably die on the air. I have beaten so many things health-wise to feel this good now. I have no plans to retire. I’ve never ever felt better than I do now.”

King’s personal life this year has also been tumultuous. He filed for divorce from his wife, Shawn King, in August after 22 years of marriage. The estranged couple are the parents of sons Chance, 20, and Cannon, 19. Shawn, 60, is Larry’s seventh wife in eight marriages. Larry is also the father of three other children from his previous marriages.

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