‘I’m back,’ says Arnold Schwarzenegger first thing after heart surgery

Arnold Schwarzenegger channeled the Terminator in his first breath after waking up from heart surgery.

“Schwarzenegger is awake and his first words were actually ‘I’m back,’ so he is in good spirits,” his spokesperson, Daniel Ketchell, said on Twitter.

The former California governor underwent a heart valve replacement surgery on Thursday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The surgery was to replace a heart valve that was originally replaced in 1997 to fix his heart defect.

“Governor Schwarzenegger’s pulmonic valve was successfully replaced and he is currently recovering from the surgery and is in a stable condition,” Ketchell said. “We want to thank the entire medical team for their tireless efforts.”

Ketchell clarified rumors that Schwarzenegger underwent emergency open heart surgery, explaining that an open-heart surgery team was on hand during the procedure in case something went wrong, but they were not needed.