Heidi Montag, 37, opened up about the horrific recovery journey she had after undergoing 10 plastic surgeries at once, in a new interview. The Hills star said her surgeon told her the recovery time would only be a few months, but it ended up taking more than a year, and at one point right after the surgeries, she almost died. “At the time, my surgeon was like, ‘Oh, it will be a quick recovery, a few months.’ And it took me over a year to heal, so I could barely talk [with] my jaw,” she said in a recent episode of Page Six’s Virtual Reali-Tea podcast. “I just had part of my chin sawed off. It was really a lot just dealing with that.”
“They called Spencer at a point and told him I had died basically. I wasn’t doing well,” she added. The blonde beauty said her heart was only beating five times per minute after she was allegedly given the incorrect dose of the opioid Demerol for pain relief.
Heidi had the surgeries, which were performed by the late Dr. Frank Ryan, when she was 23 years old and they included a chin reduction, updated breast augmentation, rhinoplasty revision, brow lift, and liposuction. She also had facial fat injections and pinned her ears back.
Heidi went on to say that the post-op struggle didn’t allow her to be back on MTV’s The Hills at the time. “I wasn’t even in a place [to film]. And I kept saying, ‘I’m not a person right now. I need to heal and recover and I’m not doing well physically.’ Like, I’m not able to show up like I was,” she explained.
“I thought I’d bounce back and be able to be on TV like I was after my first cosmetic surgery,” she said, referencing a nose job and boob job she had the year prior to the 10 surgeries. “But there was just way too much done and each thing took too much time and it hurt so bad. I was just in such an immense amount of pain.”
Heidi also said that she had to “have nurses at the house for months to help me recover. So we’re dealing with that and then we have these producers like, ‘Say this and that.’ And we’re like, ‘We can’t do this.’”
Heidi luckily went on to fully recover and has enjoyed a life with Spencer Pratt, who also starred on The Hills. The lovebirds dated on the show and ended up getting married while still filming in 2008. They now share two children, including Gunner, 5, and 10-month-old Ryker, together.