Perez Hilton revealed that he was hospitalized for 21 days after taking flu medication on an empty stomach.
“My stupidity resulted in me being hospitalized for 21 days. It was the worst and best thing that ever happened to me,” he prefaced in a YouTube video on Monday, explaining his “insane story.”
“Before I was admitted, I had the flu. I had the flu for about a week,” he explained, insisting he was not a “party” or someone who would “abuse things”.
“I took my flu medicine for a week. But, importantly, I didn’t take it with food. I never did, and all this medicine should be taken with food.”
Because of this, the 47-year-old gossip blogger “developed an ulcer, then a perforation, and then sepsis.”
“People die from sepsis,” he continued through tears. “The day before I was admitted to the hospital, I had severe abdominal pain. I thought, ‘This is weird, but it will get better soon.'”
But by the next morning, Hilton (real name Mario Armando Lavandeira Jr.) was “unable to walk” and had to be taken by ambulance to the hospital.
“I ended up staying there for 21 days, and by the time I left I felt like I knew everyone,” he said.
“The first few days were very painful and they couldn’t find the location of the perforation, so I had repeated X-rays, CT scans and ultrasounds. It was very scary.”
Five days later, he underwent laparoscopic surgery to “turn all his organs upside down” to find the perforation, followed by another major surgery because his organs were still infected.
“They didn’t know what was inside me, but they drained me of a lot more infection. Then the sepsis didn’t stop and my body kept falling apart. My heart went out of control and they had to put me on heart medication. Then I developed another infection in the hospital.”
Hilton said she was only able to eat through a feeding tube during her two weeks in the hospital.
“Isn’t that crazy? Because I love food,” he joked. “Everything was done through an IV.”
He was able to eat regularly again, but it was “a completely different process.” This was because it was not only “physically taxing” but also “humiliating” because “there were many accidents.”
“It was very humiliating, sad and painful to have to call (the nurse) so many times because I kept having accidents on the bed. But she was very kind and patient with me,” he praised. “It was a very slow process. I was just sick for two weeks, then another week of recovery before I was released.”
“Now that I’m home, I’m not 100 percent,” he said, showing the pick line on his arm. “It’s like a scary IV drip with two lines, one going to my heart.”
Hilton also said she plans to use this health scare as a lesson to slow down her lifestyle and spend more time with her three children.
“From now on, I’m going to have dinner with my kids and my mom every night,” he vowed, before thanking his entire family for supporting him during this difficult time.
On Saturday, the media personality took to Instagram to share a video and photo of herself wearing an oxygen mask in a bed at Southern Hills Hospital in Las Vegas.
Despite the worrying upload, he made sure to say he “received the best care” from medical staff and told his followers he would explain what went wrong “soon.”
