WireImage/Shannon Finney(LOS ANGELES) — Jimmy Kimmel’s wife broke her silence on her son’s health battle and her husband’s powerful monologue calling for health care reform, saying she hopes to be the one to tell her son “what his dad did for him.”
“I don’t necessarily like that everyone knows what’s going on with the health of my child,” Molly McNearney, who is also the co-head writer for her husband’s show, Jimmy Kimmel Live! said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
“It’s scary to make yourself vulnerable the way we have, but the encouragement that we’re helping other people far outweighs my fears about our lack of privacy,” McNearney added.
Kimmel and McNearney’s 7-month-old son, Billy, made headlines this May when Kimmel spoke candidly on his show about Billy’s heart defect and emergency lifesaving surgery.
Kimmel’s passionate monologue also called on all politicians to make sure Americans, especially those with pre-existing conditions, have access to medical care.
McNearney also told The Hollywood Reporter that her family is touched by how people ask about Billy everywhere they go.
“We haven’t gone to a coffee shop, filled up the gas tank, done anything without someone asking us how Billy is doing, and, thank God, we get to say something positive,” she said.
“If we were to do this all over again and someone said, ‘You would have an opportunity to have a perfectly healthy baby boy,'” McNearney added. “I would take the one we got because I think it helped a lot of families.”
She said that she cannot wait to tell Billy about the impact that he has had on others and how he has received letters from former presidents wishing him well.
“I’m looking forward to the day that I get to tell him about all of this. I want to be the one to tell Billy what his dad did for him,” she said.
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