HOLLYWOOD, Calif., July 6, 2016 (Gephardt Daily) — Comic Sarah Silverman says a freak illness nearly claimed her life last week after landing her in the intensive care unit for more than five days.
According to a post on Silverman’s Facebook page Wednesday, the popular comic actor was overcome with a “freak case of epiglottitis,” which caused her throat to swell shut and nearly cut off her airway.
Silverman said the onset of the illness began as a simple sore throat. Hours after seeing a doctor, she was admitted to the ICU at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, where she was drugged and intubated.
Silverman’s own description of the near-death experience is as follows:
Sarah Silverman
8 hrs ·
Hi. This is me telling everyone in my life at once why I haven’t been around. This will not interest everyone so feel free to disregard.
I was in the ICU all of last week and I am insanely lucky to be alive. Don’t even know why I went to the doctor, it was just a sore throat. But I had a freak case of epiglottitis.
I owe my life to Dr. Shawn Nasseri, Dr. Robert Naruse, Dr. Rob Huizenga, every nurse, and every technician & orderly at Cedars who’s punch-the-clock jobs happen to save human lives on the regular.
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?”
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?”
When I woke up 5 days later I didn’t remember anything. 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. 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.
Anyway there are some funny stories too.
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. When she looked at it, it just said, “Do you live with your mother?” next to a drawing of a penis.
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. 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.'”
I love you all. Your friend,
Sarah
