Earlier this week, Cairns announced on Instagram that he had suffered a “mild” heart attack last week.
“A little bit of R&R this week… and then back to life…” he said Monday.
“We get what we can handle… but fuck me… I'd like to have one or two in between.”
Cairns' latest health setback came after he suffered a heart attack at his Canberra home in 2021.
He then suffered a spinal stroke after emergency heart surgery.
Cairns spent 141 days in hospital in Canberra recovering and had to undergo four open-heart surgeries.
Five months later he was diagnosed with colon cancer.
The stroke left Cairns paralyzed from the waist down and he spent many difficult months learning to walk again.
Cairns played 62 Tests, 215 One-Day Internationals and two Twenty20 matches for New Zealand from 1989 to 2006.