(JTA) — Comedian Sarah Silverman said she is “insanely lucky to be alive” after being admitted to the hospital last week with a life-threatening condition.
Silverman in a Facebook post Wednesday said she spent last week in the intensive care unit of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles with a rare case of epiglottitis — the inflammation of the epiglottis, the human tissue that protects the windpipe from filling with food during swallowing.
The airway can become totally blocked by the swollen epiglottis, which can result in cardiac arrest and death, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
Silverman said she spent five days on a respirator and woke up without remembering anything after going to the doctor for what she thought was “just a sore throat.”
She also said she owed her life to her doctors and to “every nurse, and every technician & orderly at Cedars who’s punch-the-clock jobs happen to save human lives on the regular.”
