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Kathie Lee Gifford was hospitalized due to a fall while recovering from her recent hip replacement surgery, she tells PEOPLE exclusively.
The former Today co-host, 70, says she suffered a fractured pelvis in two places and was hospitalized for over a week for physical therapy.
Gifford says she “moved 300 books by myself” during book signings in Nashville. “I weakened my body,” she says. “It’s my own fault.”
The next day, one of Gifford’s friends came by to pick her up. She hurried to the door and “just tripped,” Gifford says.
“It didn’t take much, because I was weak in that spot,” Gifford tells PEOPLE. “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.”
Gifford calls it a “humbling experience” and she chose to stay in the hospital for a full week because “I don’t trust myself.”
“You think you know your body and the next thing you know, your body changes when you get older,” Gifford says. “And as much as I don’t wanna think about it, I am.”
“It’s summer for everybody but me,” Gifford says. “But it’s OK. I’m going to get out to my little farm one of these days and stick my feet in my salt pool. The Lord is telling me it’s time to slow down. I’ve been running my whole life. The Lord is telling me, ‘You’ve planted a gazillion roses. Try smelling them.’ “
Earlier this month, Gifford told PEOPLE that her hip replacement surgery and recovery has been “one of the most painful situations of my entire life.”
“It’s been really hard,” she added.
The television personality needed the surgery due to her active lifestyle. She recalled the surgeon telling her, “You climbed mountains, you made movies, you got on stages. You never took off your high heels, and you kept going and that’s why you’re going through what you’re going through.”
Despite the challenging recovery, Gifford doesn’t regret living life to the fullest.
“[I ask myself] would I change that? 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,” she said at the time.
Gifford’s hospitalization hasn’t stopped her from celebrating the release of her new book, Herod and Mary: The True Story of the Tyrant King and the Mother of the Risen Savior.
The historical nonfiction book gives “deep insight to how Herod came to power, how corruption and an ancient evil threatened the stability of a nation, and how a teenage Mary was called to traverse these obstacles to bring the Savior, Jesus, our living hope, into the world,” according to an official description.
Gifford said the idea for the book came to her while on a rabbinical trip in Israel a few years ago and Cody, 34, “convinced” her that “these are stories that need to be told because people need hope.”
“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. “I am a strong woman, but I’m a woman who for 60 years has been trying to do godly work, trying to do the right thing, trying to love people, [and] trying to represent the kingdom of God.”
