‘RHOC’ Vicki Gunvalson’s Near-Fatal Experience With ‘Deadly’ Infection
Real Housewives of Orange County star Vicki Gunvalson opened up about her recent health scare. She revealed that she had a nearly fatal infection that could have taken her life if it weren’t for her boyfriend, Michael Smith. Here’s what happened.
Vicki Gunvalson Opens Up About Near-Death Experience
On Monday, August 26, the RHOC star spoke about her medical emergency on “My Friend, My Soulmate, My Podcast.” Vicki’s boyfriend Michael tagged along to help her tell her story. The Bravo star explained that there are still many things about the ordeal that she can’t remember.
“There’s a lot of hours missing in my life because I got, like, amnesia,” she said on the podcast.
Earlier this month, Vicki Gunvalson said that she was headed to the hair salon as usual. Then, she went to her office and “there seems to be about an hour or two” that is missing from her memory.
“I had a client coming in and she said I was talking gibberish and I wrote an email out and the email didn’t make sense,” she said. The client Vicki was speaking to was a retired emergency room doctor. They immediately noticed something was off and alerted Olivia, Michael’s daughter, to the problem.
He believed that Vicki Gunvalson could have been having a stroke or some other serious medical emergency. She continued, “I don’t remember anything and [Olivia] took me to the hospital.”
She was initially misdiagnosed with a sinus infection and discharged from the hospital. Her boyfriend noted that she’d had a sinus infection a few weeks beforehand, but it didn’t seem normal. She was worse off than she usually would be if it was just a sinus infection.
The Real Housewives of Orange County star took her prescribed antibiotics and her health improved before she traveled to Europe. After hearing she previously had a sinus infection, the ER doctors “kind of ran with” that diagnosis, Michael said.
RHOC Star Had A 10 To 20% Chance Of Survival
At the time of the ER visit, Michael was in Arizona. His daughter told him he needed to get back home urgently. When he got back, he found Vicki Gunvalson in the bathtub.
“I walk in and she’s pretty much passed out,” Michael said. “I grabbed her, pulled her out of the water, put her in bed. The doctor said she just needed to sleep, so I put her in bed and she slept literally 13, 14 hour straight.”
Then, when she woke up, Vicki was disoriented. Michael was still worried that something else might be wrong and brought her back to the hospital.
“She had a massive infection,” he said on the podcast. “It was actually sepsis, but it was pneumonia. And what happened — and I’m no doctor, but when they explained it — is that when your body is fighting that big of an infection and that dangerous of an infection, your whole body attacks it, which affects the brain and everything else in your body because your body sends everything it has to fight it.”
Now, the RHOC star is still recovering and revealed a medical professional initially estimated that she had a 10-20% chance of survival. Michael said he is staying at Vicki’s place until she’s feeling like herself again, noting that the situation was “dangerous” and “scary.”
Vicki Gunvalson shared her thanks to her “guardian angels,” which included Michael’s daughter Olivia. She said that she probably would’ve died if she was home alone when the health episode occurred.
“I don’t remember much, and that’s the trauma of the brain,” she said. “It’s very similar to a stroke or PTSD where the brain kind of just goes into quiet mode. … There was just a litany of things that could have happened and gone wrong and it didn’t.”
The Real Housewives star said that she’s been emotional following the health scare. However, Michael assured fans that Vicki is doing much better now and that “she’s coming out of it.”
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