LOS ANGELES: Comedian and talk show host Rosie O'Donnell said she suffered a heart attack last week and had a stent inserted to treat a blocked artery.

"I am lucky to be here", O'Donnell, 50, said in a blog entry called "my heart attack" on her Rosie.com website.

The writer and comic said her chest began to ache last week, and she became nauseous and feverish after helping a woman who was struggling to get out of her car in her Nyack village home, near New York.

After taking some aspirin, she went to see a cardiologist who "sent me to the hospital where a stent was put in. My LAD (left anterior descending artery) was 99 % blocked, they call this type of heart attack the 'widow maker', I am lucky to be here".

O'Donnell said she never called emergency services but urged women to learn more about the symptoms of heart attacks, which kill some 200,000 women a year in the United States alone.

O'Donnell, one of America's best-known and most outspoken female celebrities and gay activists, was last seen on U.S. television as the host of "The Rosie Show" on Oprah Winfrey's cable venture OWN. The daily talk and game show was canceled in March due to low ratings. AGENCIES