Sarah Silverman says she’s one lucky lady. The funny woman shared with fans via Facebook on Wednesday, July 6, that she almost died last week.
“I was in the ICU all of last week and I am insanely lucky to be alive,” she revealed in her post. “Don’t even know why I went to the doctor, it was just a sore throat. But I had a freak case of epiglottitis.”
According to the Mayo Clinic, epiglottitis is a potentially life-threatening condition that occurs when the epiglottis, a small cartilage lid that covers your windpipe, swells, blocking the flow of air into your lungs.
Silverman, 45, thanked her team of doctors at Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai Hospital, which included Charlie Sheen’s and The Biggest Loser’s doctor, Rob Huizenga.
“There’s something that happens when three people you’re so close to die within a year and then YOU almost die but don’t. (That was me. I’m the one that didn’t die.) It’s a strange dichotomy between, ‘Why me?’ and the other, ‘Why me?’” she continued in her post. “They couldn’t put me fully to sleep for the recovery process because my blood pressure’s too low. I was drugged just enough to not feel the pain and have no idea what was happening or where I was. They had to have my hands restrained to keep me from pulling out my breathing tube. My friend Stephanie said I kept writing, ‘Was I in an accident?’”
Silverman wrote that after she woke up five days later, she couldn’t recall anything that had occurred until her meds wore off.
“I thanked everyone at the ICU for my life, went home, and then slowly as the opiates faded away, remembered the trauma of the surgery & spent the first two days home kind of free-falling from the meds / lack of meds and the paralyzing realization that nothing matters,” she continued. “Luckily that was followed by the motivating revelation that nothing matters. I’m so moved by my real-life hero, Michael, and amazing Sissies (blood & otherwise) & friendos, who all coordinated so that there wasn’t a moment I was alone. It makes me cry. Which hurts my throat. So stop.”
After thanking her boyfriend, Michael Sheen, the comedian concluded that her scare also included some “funny stories too.”
Silverman said that at one point she “stopped a nurse — like it was an emergency — [and] furiously wrote down a note and gave it to her.” The message read, “Do you live with your mother?” along with a drawing of a penis. She also first thought of Sally Field’s 2015 dramatic comedy, Hello My Name Is Doris, when she first came to.
“When I first woke up and the breathing tube came out, I still couldn’t talk and they gave me a board of letters to communicate,” she recalled. “My loved ones stood there, so curious what was going to be the first thing I had to say. They followed my finger, rapt, as I pointed from letter to letter until I finally spelled out, ‘Did you see Hello My Name Is Doris?’”
