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Sarah Silverman “Insanely Lucky to Be Alive” After Freak Illness

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ABC/Heidi Gutman(NEW YORK) — Sarah Silverman is counting her blessings, revealing in a letter on Facebook Wednesday that she recently endured a “freak” medical scare she says almost took her life.

“I was in the ICU all of last week and I am insanely lucky to be alive,” writes the 45-year-old actress and comic. “Don’t even know why I went to the doctor, it was just a sore throat. But I had a freak case of epiglottitis.”

Epiglottitis is a potentially life-threatening illness that occurs when a small cartilage that covers the windpipe swells, blocking the flow of air into the lungs, according to the Mayo Clinic.

After thanking the doctors, nurses and staff at Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Silverman described how she couldn’t be put fully to sleep during the recovery process because her blood pressure was too low, and her hands had to be restrained so she wouldn’t pull out her breathing tube.

“When I woke up 5 days later I didn’t remember anything,” she continues. “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.”

Sarah goes on to thank her boyfriend, actor Michael Sheen, and “amazing Sissies (blood & otherwise) & friendos, who all coordinated so that there wasn’t a moment I was alone.”

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