In a video posted recently to his YouTube channel as part of his health and fitness group, Arnold’s Pump Club, the 76-year-old actor and bodybuilder recalled a frightening incident in early 2018 when he was supposed to undergo non-invasive heart surgery.

“I remember when I had my open heart surgery, my third one… I was really freaking out, and I woke up all of the sudden and the doctor was standing in front of me, and saying ‘I’m so sorry, but unlike what we planned, a non-invasive surgery… we made a mistake and poked through the heart wall, and there was internal bleeding, and we had to open you up to save your life.’” Schwarzenegger recalled.  

“The bottom line is, you cannot roll the clock back,” he continued. “I was in the middle of a disaster… so now it’s about, ‘how do I get out of it?’ You have to shift gears.”

Schwarzenegger said he realized that the first step to recovery was getting healthy enough to get discharged from the hospital.

“[That meant] getting out of bed and start walking. First 10 steps, then longer and longer,” he explained, adding that when he needed extra motivation, “I called my buddies in and said, ‘You guys have to fire me up. You have to count the number of steps that I’m doing”.

“And this is what we did, everyday. Everybody came into the hospital, They said, ‘OK, Arnold, it’s time to get up!’” Schwarzenegger recalled. “I wanted to get really going with the exercise, get out of the hospital as quick as possible, and then get going with the training again.”

“Because three months later, I started with Terminator 6,” he said, referring to Terminator: Dark Fate, which was set to start shooting after multiple delays. “So I had to be in shape, I had to be able to move around, run around, lift things up, do the fight scene, all these things.”

As Schwarzenegger reflected on his recovery journey, he also shared behind-the-scenes footage, both of him in the hospital and then training on workout machines after getting out.

“And I did it! Because I had a positive attitude and knew exactly how I was going to get there,” he explained. “[And] I had the support system, because none of this we can do by ourselves… When I started shooting Terminator 6, I was all back together again.

The African cardinal was hospitalised in the Santo Spirito Hospital in Rome last week shortly before the Vatican ceremony in which he was to receive a red biretta from Pope Francis.

Father Dieu-Donne Kofi Davor, the communications director for the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference, told CNA on 31 August that the “surgery will take place before the week ends.”

“We are praying for his speedy recovery and return to Ghana soon,” Davor said.

Baawobr’s absence from the consistory presided over by Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Basilica did not prevent him from being elevated to the College of Cardinals on 27 August.

The 63-year-old received the title of cardinal while being treated in the Roman hospital. Pope Francis asked people to pray for Baawobr at the end of his homily for the consistory.

Baawobr was recently elected head of the African bishops’ conference, the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), at the end of July.

He has led the Diocese of Wa, in northwest Ghana, since 2016, and is known locally for his charity and care for people with mental disabilities in a country where the stigmatization of mental illness is still high.

Six years ago he launched a diocesan street ministry that brings together parish volunteers and health care professionals to provide care and medical assistance for people with mental disabilities who have been abandoned by their families.

“I think each one of us, wherever we are, we are called to serve, and that is what will make us great, not the title,” Baawobr said in an interview with ACI Africa, CNA’s Nairobi-based news partner, before traveling to Rome for the consistory.

Before he became Bishop of Wa, Baawobr was the first African to serve as the superior general of the Missionaries of Africa, commonly called the “White Fathers” for their distinctive white cassocks.

The current superior of the Missionaries of Africa is one of the only people who has been allowed to visit Baawobr while he has been hospitalised in Rome, according to Davor.

A delegation from the diocese of Wa, who accompanied Baawobr to Italy for the consistory, has been able to continue with its scheduled pilgrimages to basilicas in Rome and Assisi despite the cardinal’s medical problems.

Baawobr was one of two newly created cardinals from Africa, along with Cardinal Peter Okpaleke from Nigeria’s Ekwulobia Diocese, in Saturday’s ceremony.

“I do not want to end without recalling Cardinal Richard Kuuia Baawobr, Bishop of Wa, who yesterday, upon his arrival in Rome, felt bad and was hospitalised with a heart problem,” Pope Francis said at the consistory.

“Let us pray for this brother who ought to have been here and is hospitalised,” he said.

The ‘Terminator’ actor, 73, shared the news on social media on Friday, October 23.  

In his post, the former California governor said the procedure was done at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio and that he is already up and walking about the streets of Cleveland.

He wrote: Thanks to the team at the Cleveland Clinic, I have a new aortic valve to go along with my new pulmonary valve from my last surgery. I feel fantastic and have already been walking the streets of Cleveland enjoying your amazing statues. Thank you to every doc and nurse on my team!’