Sarah Silverman ‘insanely lucky to be alive’ after health scare that put her in intensive care for a week

Sarah Silverman says she’s “insanely lucky to be alive� after a “freak� occurrence of a condition that blocks air flow to the lungs.

“Don't even know why I went to the doctor, it was just a sore throat. But I had a freak case of epiglottitis,� the comic wrote on Facebook, explaining that she’d just come off five days in the intensive care unit at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

In this condition, the epiglottis – the body feature that opens the airway to the lungs when a person breathes and closes it when they swallow â€“ swells and blocks the airway entirely.

“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?,� wrote Silverman, 45.

Silverman said that because her blood pressure was low, she couldn’t be put “fully to sleepâ€� during recovery, and kept asking friends if she’d been 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.�

In addition to the nurses, techs and orderlies, those on her thank-you list included Dr. Robert Huizenga, who’s known as Charlie Sheen’s physician, and the doctor who works with patients on “The Biggest Loser.�

“I'm so moved by my real-life hero, Michael,� Silverman said, referring to her partner Michael Sheen, “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.�

Follow Christie D’Zurilla on Twitter @theCDZ.

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