Sam Champion admits he was caught off guard when he learned he’d have to undergo an emergency heart procedure this week.
On Monday, the “Good Morning America” weathercaster took many viewers by surprise when he shared a photo of himself on Instagram in a hospital bed. In the accompanying caption, he thanked medical professionals at Mount Sinai’s Fuster Heart Hospital in New York, while noting he was “expected to make a full recovery” following the procedure.
Returning to “Good Morning America” on Wednesday, Champion spoke candidly about the procedure, which he said took just one hour to complete. Though he’d been tested repeatedly, he said, his doctors had told him “everything looked fine” until they took note of one symptom.
Watch Champion speak about his health below.
“I’m healthy. My heart presents as healthy,” he explained. “There was one symptom that kept persisting. I didn’t know it could mean a heart attack until I had a nuclear stress test to see what was going on inside my heart, to see how my heart was moving and holding blood.”
He went on to note: “Noticing I was a little out of breath was the one thing that was wrong with me. I’m 64 years old. My doctors said, ‘We need to do this test right away.’”
After getting the results of the stress test, doctors determined that Champion would have to undergo a cardiac catheterization, described by Johns Hopkins Medicine as a procedure in which a catheter is moved through a blood vessel to provide detailed information or treatment of the heart’s arteries, valves and chambers.
The news came as a shock, Champion said, given that he’s tried his best to maintain an active lifestyle, as evidenced by the numerous photographs of him at the gym or on the beach on social media.
“But one test ended up saving my life,” he said Wednesday. “I want to share that with you.”
Champion, who has been married to Rubem Robierb since 2012, has long been vocal about his health. The Kentucky native was diagnosed with skin cancer at age 26, and in 2010, he had a basal cell carcinoma removed from his shoulder while on-air. Two years ago, he revealed he’d undergone Mohs surgery after a spot below his left eye was determined to be skin cancer.