Ray Romano gives health update after revealing he underwent heart surgery

Ray Romano has opened up to the public about his recent life saving surgery experience for the first time since it happened.

During a recent appearance on the ‘WTF with Marc Maron’ podcast, Romano talked about his experiences and how he is doing following the surgery.

Romano was taken to the hospital and given emergency surgery after doctors discovered a 90 percent blockage in one of his major arteries.

“I had to have a stent put in,” Romano explained. “I got kinda lucky that we found it before having a [widow-maker] heart attack.”

Romano opens up about health struggles

The ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ actor, who has had a long battle with high cholesterol, also revealed that despite his doctors recommendations, he stayed away from medications that would help him.

“Every time, I said, ‘Let me do it myself.’ And I would go home, and I would eat right — not vegan, but a little healthier and get it down a couple ticks,” said Romano.

“I’d go home and think I was hot s**t. I’d get it down already, and I’d start cheating, cheating, and that was the cycle.”

Romano changed his lifestyle and decided to go on meds after his doctor told him that his high cholesterol had to be lowered before he was in “danger”.

“Now, I’m on the meds,” he said. “If I could go back 20 years, I would have taken the pills and prevented the blockage from ever happening.

“It’s hard for me to sustain that diet stuff. I’m on the meds, and it’s got [my cholesterol] all down now, so I figure now I can enjoy and eat some food. My sugar level’s up now, I’m on the pre-diabetic side.”

Romano’s health scare was a wake up call

When Romano first started feeling the chest pains that led to finding a 90 percent blocked artery, he was busy at work both directing and starring in his upcoming project, ‘Somewhere in Queens’.

After seeing his ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ co-star, Peter Boyle, pass away in 2006 from chest pains, which turned out to be a fatal heart attack, Romano quickly phoned his agent when he started having chest pains.

“I called my agent at one in the morning because I couldn’t sleep, I go, ‘I can’t do it, can’t do this,’” Romano told ET in a recent interview.

“Because -- I’m not joking -- I had to go to my cardiologist in New York and get on the treadmill and do a stress test because I was getting chest pains.”