Sarah Silverman ‘lucky to be alive’ after health scare

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 took to Facebook on Wednesday to tell her friends and fans in a post that she spent last week in the Intensive Care Unit of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles with a rare case of epiglottitis.

Epiglottitis is 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 a swollen epiglottis, which can result in cardiac arrest and death, according to the US National Library of Medicine.

Silverman said she went to the doctor for what she thought was “just a sore throat.” She spent five days on a respirator and woke up without remembering anything.

She also said that 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.”