She's baaack! The mother hen returned to the roost today as Barbara Walters Skyped into The View two months to the day after she underwent open heart surgery.
"I am fully recovered!" she announced after receiving a standing ovation from the studio audience.
Walters praised her fans and friends—Hillary Clinton, Woody Allen and Queen Rania of Jordan all earned name-checks—for sending their well wishes, though admitted that seeing the reports of her health were "like reading my own obituary."
As for her cohosts' comments about how great she looked, she said, "People thought that I was going to be like something out of an Edgar Allan Poe story…I don't know what they expected me to look like."
Maybe a little more…animal?
When describing the procedure, Walters went into some of the gory details, but proved she was still TV-ready by providing some laughs along the way.
After explaining how the doctor replaced a valve, she clarified, "In my case an animal valve, either from a pig or a cow…I was glad it was a cow, because I didn't think the pig was kosher."
And while Walters is fine now—fine enough in fact to resume her Sirius XM radio show with View exec producer Bill Geddie today—she did note that she had a much easier experience than most who undergo the grueling surgery.
"I never had terrible pain. So many of the things that I heard…I was never very depressed, I was so glad to be alive, I'm so glad to talk to you."
When pushed, she admitted that she did experience "soreness," but "never real pain."
She said she was given painkillers her first few days in the hospital, but that she doesn't have any recollection of those hours after emerging from surgery.
"I do know I had a blood transfusion the second or third day because I was anemic. But after that, I had soreness, but never really pain."
She returns as a regular on The View panel this September.