In February 2023, Sushmita Sen suffered a severe heart attack with 95% artery blockage while filming Aarya 3. She stayed conscious during angioplasty, refusing anesthesia to maintain control. Driven by responsibility, she returned to the set in 15 days, highlighting her resilience and commitment to her crew and career.
In February 2023, while filming the third season of the web series ‘Aarya’ in Jaipur, actress Sushmita Sen experienced a severe heart attack caused by a critical 95 percent blockage in her artery. She underwent an angioplasty procedure, remarkably choosing to stay awake and conscious throughout the surgery, refusing anesthesia to maintain control. Despite the gravity of the situation, she made an inspiring comeback, returning to the set within just 15 days, driven by her sense of responsibility towards the many daily wage workers relying on the production.
Reflecting on the heart attack
During her conversation with Divya Jain on a podcast, Sushmita opened up about her experience with a heart attack. She shared, “When you suffer a heart attack and you are conscious through it, you kind of know how close you came to being on the other side of life. Once you cross that, you also know how far behind it is now, and you know the difference. Also I have become a person who has so much to do, between running my professional life, being Sushmita Sen as a brand, being a single mother with two daughters – watching over their security along with their roles at development, life has been about a lot of adjustments and somewhere in the middle I have had relationships also, if you look at all of these aspects, I only know how to keep going. In my mind, everything is transient, including a heart attack. If I were not to survive it, then there would be no story to tell, but if you have survived it, then no point sitting a harping about what happened then.”
Choosing consciousness during surgery
The actress shared that during her heart attack surgery, she chose to remain fully awake and conscious. She said, “All my doctors will tell you, I was very impatient with them. I said I didn’t want to be unconscious during the procedure. The control freak in me doesn’t like losing consciousness; it’s also the reason why I survived the heart attack, because it was a choice between suffering it and staying conscious and losing consciousness and sleeping, then not waking up. I was conscious throughout that, and wanted to be conscious through the procedure. I was very clear about not numbing the pain; I wanted to see what was going on. I went through that and kept chatting with doctors, asking them to hurry up, because I wanted to go back on set. My entire crew was waiting in Jaipur.”
Responsibility toward the crew and comeback
She added, “When you headline a show, it’s not an ordinary job; you have the privilege of taking on the onus of a 500-member crew. They have all been very nice to you; they understand and are concerned about you, but at the same time, I am concerned about the fact that their daily wages are stuck, and you cannot shoot without me. I was okay, had done whatever I had to, so I had to get on with it. They were sort of shouting at me, still, it took me 15 days negotiating with them, but then I was allowed to go back and film Aarya.” Go to Source
