Sarah Silverman "Lucky To Be Alive" After Illness

Scary news for Sarah Silverman. The actress and comedian took to Facebook on Wednesday to thank her loved ones for being by her side as she battled a freak illness. In the post, Silverman revealed she'd been in the ICU at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center for five days after contracting epiglottitis. The illness, which occurs when the piece of cartilage that covers the windpipe swells and blocks air from getting to the lungs, is rare, and can cause respiratory failure.

The star admits she wasn’t even sure why she went to the doctor in the first place, other than feeling the typical symptoms of having a sore throat — but, thankfully, she did. Once there, the medical team, who Silverman thanked profusely in her post, worked to save Silverman’s life.

Silverman spoke openly about her experience, sharing some haunting details from the experience in her post. She revealed that the medical team “couldn't put me fully to sleep for the recovery process because my blood pressure's too low." The star admitted that, during this process, she “was drugged just enough to not feel the pain” and that the medical team had to “have my hands restrained to keep me from pulling out my breathing tube.”

The whole event sounds absolutely terrifying, especially considering the state Silverman was in when she woke up: "When I woke up 5 days later I didn't remember anything," Silverman recalled. "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."

Silverman went on to thank Michael Sheen and her family and friends who “all coordinated so that there wasn't a moment I was alone,"

Of course Silverman shared some lighter moments from the experience as well, telling the story about stopping a nurse to give her a note as if it was an emergency — except that it really, really wasn't. "... 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."

I'm overjoyed to hear that Silverman received the life-saving medical treatment she needed and is doing well. Here’s hoping the rest of her recovery is a speedy one.