Sarah Silverman almost died after thinking she just had a sore throat
The comedian took to her Facebook to share that she was in the Intensive Care Unit last week after visiting the doctor for what she thought was merely a sore throat. It turned out to be epiglottitis, which is where the tissue surrounding the windpipe swells and blocks the flow of oxygen, according to the Mayo Clinic.
"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.)," she wrote. "It's a strange dichotomy between, 'Why me?' and the other, 'Why me?'"
Silverman described her time in the ICU and how she was too drugged out to feel pain but was never fully asleep and had to be restrained from pulling out her own breathing tubes.
"When I woke up five days later I didn't remember anything," she wrote. "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 paralyzing realization that nothing matters. Luckily that was followed by the motivating revelation that nothing matters."
She thanked the team of doctors and nurses at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles for saving her, as well as her boyfriend, actor Michael Sheen, and family and friends for never leaving her alone.
Ever the funnywoman, Silverman also shared some humorous moments from her time in the hospital, like the quick note she wrote to a nurse that 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," she wrote. "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.'"
It's good to see Silverman doing better and knowing that she never loses her humor in stressful times.