Watch your step, Kelly Ripa!
When the bubbly blond walked on to the set of Live! With Kelly and Michael in New York City Thursday, she did so on crutches.
"I'm like, 'Maybe nobody will notice,'" the famously fit soap opera star told co-host Michael Strahan. "This is my big goal and my hope. My dream was that nobody would notice. Like even today when you came in and you didn't notice, I was like, 'Oh, good! I'm getting away with it.' And then somebody was like, 'Didn't you see her foot?' I was like, 'Shh! Not everybody needs to see the foot.' We can all ignore it."
Easier said than done, of course. So what happened?
"I was in a dance class, like I typically, usually am, and somebody had left a weight on the floor. Usually what happens is you do dancing and then you do weights and then you put your weights back on your mat," Ripa recalled. "Somebody, I guess, either left it not on their mat or maybe kicked it when they were dancing. I don't know. All I know is I did a jump—and in my mind, I am an incredible dancer, graceful as can be—and I landed on the weight and my foot went over and under the weight. It sounded like bubble wrap, you guys! My girlfriend Rachael Harris was in class in front of me."
"She's a girl you want with you if you're gonna like hurt yourself, because she stopped everything. Everybody else kept dancing. They jumped over me. They jumped around me. I said to her, 'Um, can you open the door? She was like, 'Oh, my gosh! Should I call 911?' I'm like, 'No ambulance! Don't want to be on the evening news. Just open the door.' So I crawled out, and I really did not feel well at all. I felt, like, really queasy."
Ripa went to the hospital, and Mark Consuelos met his wife there soon after.
"So we took this X-ray and the new did a CT scan and we found out that I have like four little bones that broke off. He said the good news is it's in a way that doesn't require surgery," the morning show host said. "So that's good!"
"Then he said, 'Let me ask you a question. Before this happened, did you have a lot of pain in your foot?' And I was like, 'No. No pain.' He's like, 'Did you have difficulty flexing or pointing your foot?' I said, 'No, I dance every day as a matter of fact. I'm extraordinarily graceful.'"
Ripa admitted that she was surprised by what else the X-ray revealed. "He said I have something called—and I made them write it down because I want you guys to understand that this sounds like, to me, it sounds like a war strategy and not really a medical problem—a calcaneonavicular coalition. What the heck is that? He said it's like my bones, they're supposed to be more separated, but they're too close together," she said. "He wasn't sure if it was the rolling that caused it or if I was just born with my bones too close together."
Ripa was told to put weight on it in a few days and to wear a boot for six weeks. "There's a special shoe that you wear with the boot, but I'm not wearing that on camera. I think the boot is enough suffering."
"I was like, 'I need antidepressant!'" Ripa said.
The doctors said an antidepressant would inhibit her bones from healing.
Strahan said he could "bedazzle it personally with my glue gun and some sparkles," but Ripa politely declined her co-host's offer. "Let me tell you, I don't plan on being in this thing that long," she explained, telling Strahan, "I'm not going to be in this that long. [My doctor said], 'Six weeks.' I give it three weeks."
Luckily, Consuelos was able to make Ripa laugh during her hospital visit. "He's never in 21 years, he's never felt the need to photograph me, videotape me...when I have full hair and makeup, nothing," she said. "Yesterday, he was like Scavullo. He followed me around with a camera. He was never more alive."
Ripa added, "He loved this moment of suffering!"
She then shared one of Consuelos' videos with viewers.
"It's very traumatic-looking," she said, "but I feel fine."
"I feel like a fool and my ego is very severely injured," Ripa added.