Kathie Lee Gifford Said She ‘Wanted to Die’ While Recovering From Multiple Surgeries

The 72-year-old star has endured hip, arm, and eye surgeries in the span of a year, admitting the physical toll pushed her to some of her darkest moments. Still, Gifford says she's determined to bounce back for her five grandchildren.

Kathie Lee Gifford is getting candid about a difficult stretch in her life over the past year.

The television personality underwent a complete hip replacement just over a year ago, only to fracture it again after getting a little too energetic while playing with her grandchildren.

Not long after, she broke her arm rolling over on it awkwardly one night, and a fall on uneven pavement led to yet another fracture. When she noticed her depth perception had started slipping, she underwent cataract surgery as well.

"I feel like Mr. Potato Head! One thing falls off and then another," Gifford said in a new interview. "But you have to have a sense of humor about everything. Thank God I've never lost that, even in my bleakest moments. I'm a tough broad."

Despite the setbacks, Gifford says humor is the one trait she hopes people remember most about her. "I want to be remembered as somebody that if they only met me one time, they think, 'She was kind. She made me laugh,'" she said.

Her breakthrough came in 1977 on the game show "Name That Tune," and in the decades since, Gifford said she has climbed "so many mountains," moving "from one project to the next" in ways that eventually caught up with her physically.

"A lot of it was physical," she explained. "I remember doing 'Annie' at Madison Square Garden for five weeks over Christmastime [in 2006], and I played Miss Hannigan. I wanted to make it big so that the little kids sitting could see it. I did pratfalls."

"When I look back on all of these years in this industry, I go, 'I can't believe I didn't fall apart years ago,'" she continued. "I've never abused [my body], I just used it."

Over the last three years, Gifford has welcomed five grandchildren, including son Cody's kids Frank, 4, Ford, 2, and Faith, 10 months, along with daughter Cassidy's children Finn, 3, and Rosie, 13 months.

Recovering while watching them play nearby, unable to join in the way she wanted, proved especially tough. "I couldn't carry them, I couldn't love on them, I couldn't run and play with them," she said. "All I could do was sit there and sing and write silly songs with them."

The pain also kept her from going out as often. Her late husband, Frank Gifford, felt similarly before his death at age 84 in 2015. "Frank said to me before he passed, 'When I go somewhere, I know what people are expecting from me. I want to be Frank Gifford when I go out,'" she recalled.

Gifford found herself relating to that sentiment. "I want to be Kathie Lee, the person they expect. I don't want to disappoint people. But when you're in pain, it's so debilitating, and everything's a grimace," she said.

While she's weathered emotional hardship before, she says nothing compared to the chronic physical pain of this past year. "I've had emotional pain many times in my life, but never this chronic physical pain where you literally want to go home to Jesus," she shared.

During her lowest points, Gifford recalled praying, "Lord, if this is all you have left for me, I want to go home."

"I wanted to die a few times," she admitted. "I wasn't going to hurt myself. I wasn't going to kill myself. I just didn't want to be here — as blessed as I am."

Now recovering thanks to her surgeries, six-days-a-week physical therapy, and stem cell treatment, Gifford is thrilled to report she's back to running "all over the place" with her grandkids.

"They're all fantastic," she said. "I'm hoping, Lord willing, that I have many, many years with them."