While recovering from surgery, Kathie Lee Gifford has also been hit hard with a broken heart.
Can reveal the former Today show host has been reeling from her hip replacement procedure and her recent split with boyfriend Richard Spitz.
An insider claimed her physical recovery has been “one of the most painful situations of her entire life. It’s been really hard”.
Gifford, 70, “has been ordered to rest, but it’s challenging for her to sit still”.
An insider said: “She tries to do too much and all this lurching and limping does her no good.
“She aches all the time and lets everyone know it too. Pals have begged her to slow down and stop moving around, but she can’t. She’s her own worst enemy.”
After the operation, the former Regis and Kathie Lee star admitted she may have “jumped off that gurney” and realized she had tried to accomplish too much too soon.
Gifford said: “I walked, I climbed. I walked, and my doctor said, ‘Kathie, no. You have got to realize that this is serious.’
“I was off my walker in two days, and then I did too much. I just did too much that because that’s who I am.”
Her grandchildren then came to visit when The Herod and Mary: The True Story of the Tyrant King and the Mother of the Rise Savior author had “started carrying books around and signing”.
She said: “And you can’t. I have learned from this that you can only do so much.”
A source claimed Gifford’s workload came about because “she’s still brokenhearted” and “she’s never really gotten over the breakup” with her former beau.
In 2023, Gifford went public with her new relationship after sharing a snapshot of herself and Spitz on holiday.
Before that, in 2021, she mentioned she had a “really special relationship” with Spitz, although he was not named at the time.
At the time, Gifford and Spitz were pictured on a walk in Nashville.
During their walk, Gifford stumbled and Spitz helped her back on her feet.
The two then called it quits in February.
An insider close to the situation claimed: “She would have married and would have proposed if he didn’t.
“But they wanted different things. She still feels jilted. Now she’s feeling sorry and moping and doing too much.
“Frankly, people around her are tired of the same sad song.”
In July, reported Gifford was hospitalized after taking a nasty fall while recovering from her hip replacement surgery.
Gifford was rushing to meet with a friend at her front door when she tripped and fell and fractured her pelvis in two places.
She said after the incident: “It didn’t take much, because I was weak in that spot.”
Gifford also mentioned how she had “moved 300 books by myself” before the accident – which “weakened my body…it’s my own fault”.
She added; “And the next thing you know, I am back in the hospital with a fractured pelvis, the front and the back. That’s more painful than anything I went through with the hip.
“The pelvis is unbelievably painful. But anyway, here I am.”