Kathie Lee Gifford Hospitalized with Fractured Pelvis After Fall amid Hip Replacement Recovery (Exclusive)

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.”