A local TV reporter absent from the air since before Labor Day has revealed that he suffered a heart attack.

Scott Budman, a tech and business reporter for NBC Bay Area told his 12,400 Twitter followers and Facebook audience that he had open heart surgery following the attack, which he said happened early on Sept. 3.

“We had come back from a family hike in Point Reyes (way out of cellphone range) on Sunday, followed by a two-hour drive home,” he wrote. “It felt like nothing I’d ever felt, and I am extremely lucky that it happened when it did, at our home, near the hospital.”

Budman said the experience is the first time he’d ever required hospitalization.

“I’d been lucky up to that point forever,” he wrote. “That Monday was the first night I’d spent in a hospital because of my own illness. It was my first ever surgery. But now, I’m also living through the first time my kids have ever looked at me with concern.”

The prognosis is good, Budman said, but the recovery is expected to take a long time. Budman has been with the station since 1995 after beginning his career in Orange County. According to his station bio, he grew up in Oakland.

“Breathing is strained,” he wrote. “I walk like a robot, and because of a lack of sleep, my mind plays tricks on me. But each day is a little better”

There is no timetable for Budman’s return to the station. He called his cohorts at NBC Bay Area his “family members” and said his recent return home is “a good launching point for recovery.”

“Nothing is the same yet, and it will [be] a while to get there,” he wrote. “But as always, it feels good to write. … Thanks for indulging me.”