Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs Kathie Lee Gifford had “serious” and “total” hip replacement surgery about a month ago after being in “agonizing pain” as her doctors struggled to find the source.”They had been looking for the problem in my spine,” the former co-host of the Fourth Hour of TODAY recalled in a July 17 interview on TODAY. “They finally found out what it was, and by that time, I’d been in such agonizing pain.” “My doctor finished the surgery, came in to tell me it went beautifully, and then he said, ‘Kathie, how have you been existing all this time? (You had) some of the worst hips I’ve ever seen.'””It was terrible,” Gifford, 70, added. “You can’t fool your body, and it knows how old you are, and it knows where you’ve been.”She previously opened up to People about trying to take life more slowly after she “did too much” following the procedure, calling the recuperation “one of the most painful experiences” of her life. “I walked, I climbed, I walked, and my doctor said, ‘Kathie, no. You have got to realize that this is serious,’” she told the magazine. “And I was off my walker in two days. I was off all my medications in three days, and then I did too much. I just did too much because that’s who I am.” Gifford had been signing books and preparing for the July 16 release of her new religious book, “Herod and Mary: The True Story of the Tyrant King and the Mother of the Risen Savior.” She also spent time with her grandchildren, but realized she was pushing a little too hard while recovering from the hip replacement. “I have learned from this that you only can only do so much,” she said. “You’re just human.” She said her hips were “down to the nubs,” and her doctors told her she needed the replacement due to an active lifestyle of exercise and traveling. “Would I change that?” she said about her lifestyle. “No, I was doing what God put me on this earth to do. Every year of it, I was doing what he called me to do.” The procedure is a common one. About 544,000 hip replacements are done every year, according to the American College of Rheumatology. TODAY weatherman Al Roker had a hip replacement in 2019, missing just 12 days of work before he was back on the show. Gifford is keeping a positive attitude as she continues her recovery and releases her new book. “I don’t know how much time the Lord has me still on this earth, but for whatever time it is I pray that I would be useful … that I would be kind and helpful, and loving to people,” she told People.
