Comedian Sarah Silverman has revealed she nearly died last week.
She shared the news in a candid Facebook post explaining why she hasn’t been around.
“I was in the ICU all of last week and I am insanely lucky to be alive,” her post began. “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 a piece of small cartilage that covers the windpipe swells up, blocking the flow of air into the lungs.
Sarah Silverman speaks about the gender wage gap. (Post continues after the video.)
Silverman, 45, explained that her recollections of most of the time she spent in the hospital are hazy at best.
“They couldn’t put me fully to sleep for the recovery process because my blood pressure’s too low,” she wrote.
“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?’,” She said.
When she came to she says she couldn’t remember anything. “When I woke up 5 days later I didn’t remember anything,” Silverman explained.
“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 and spent the first two days home kind of free-falling from the meds/lack of meds and the paralysing realisation that nothing matters. Luckily that was followed by the motivating revelation that nothing matters.”
The best of Sarah Silverman on Instagram. (Post continues after gallery.)
Image via @sarahkatesilverman on Instagram.
In her note, the actress says thank you to her friends, family, and the entire staff of the Cedar-Sinai hospital saying she owes them her life. As well as a special thank you to her “real-life hero,” her boyfriend actor Michael Sheen.
“I’m so moved by my real-life hero, Michael, and amazing Sissies (blood & otherwise) and friends, who all coordinated so that there wasn’t a moment I was alone,” she wrote.
“It makes me cry. Which hurts my throat. So stop.”
In typical fashion, Silverman is able to find the humor even in this incredibly scary situation.
“I couldn’t speak for a while and I don’t remember a lot of my ‘lucid’ time, but Amy (the Zvi) told me I stopped a nurse – like it was an emergency – furiously wrote down a note and gave it to her,” she wrote.
“When she looked at it, it just said, ‘Do you live with your mother?’ next to a drawing of a penis.”
And like any great comedian, Silverman ends with a strong closing joke.
“Also, 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 said.
“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’.”
We’re glad to hear she’s doing better and hopeful this will all turn into great new material.
Read Sarah Silverman’s full post.
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"...and the paralysing realisation that nothing matters. Luckily that was followed by the motivating revelation that nothing matters.”