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Perez Hilton recently shared how a simple mistake with flu medication led to a significant health scare that kept him hospitalized for 21 days.
In a YouTube video posted on Monday, Hilton opened up about what he described as a “crazy saga,” admitting, “My own foolishness put me in the hospital for 21 days. It was simultaneously the worst and best experience of my life.”
Hilton recounted that he had been suffering from the flu for about a week. He emphasized that he doesn’t indulge in partying or misuse substances.
He explained, “I took medication for the flu consistently over that week. However, and this is crucial, I never took the medication with food. I’ve never done that, although you’re supposed to.”
This oversight led the 47-year-old celebrity blogger to develop an ulcer, which then progressed to a perforation and eventually sepsis.
“People die of sepsis,” he tearfully continued. “The day before I was hospitalized, I was in so much stomach pain. I was like ‘This is weird, but it’ll go away.’”
But by the next morning Hilton — born Mario Armando Lavandeira Jr. — “couldn’t walk” and had to be taken by ambulance to the hospital.
“I ended up being there for 21 days. I felt like I knew everybody by the time I left,” he said.
“The first few days were a lot of pain and constant tests, X-rays, CT scans, ultrasounds, because they couldn’t find where the perforation was. So that was scary.”
After five days, he had laparoscopic surgery to “flip around all of [his] organs” trying to find the perforation, followed by another major procedure because his organs were still infected.
“They inserted I don’t know what inside of me and drained a ton more infection out of me and then the sepsis just kept working and my body kept falling apart. My heart got out of control, they had to put me on heart medications. And then, I developed another infection in the hospital.”
Hilton said that over the two weeks in the hospital he could only eat through a feeding tube.
“Isn’t that crazy? ‘Cause I love food,” he joked. “Everything was through IV.”
Once he was able to start eating regularly again, it was a “whole other process” because it can be “hard on the body” as well as “humiliating” because he was having “a lot of accidents.”
“I felt so humiliated and sad and bad to have to keep calling [the nurse] because I kept having accidents in the bed. But she was so kind and patient,” he praised. “It was just such a slow process. Two weeks of just sickness and then another week of getting better before I was released.”
“Now that I am home, I am not 100 percent,” he noted, showing a pick line into his arm. “It’s like a scary IV with two lines, and one goes to my heart.”
Hilton also shared that he is using this health scare as a learning lesson and is going to slow down his lifestyle and be more present with his three children.
“I’m going to have dinner with my kids and my mom every night from now on,” he pledged, before thanking his entire family for supporting him through this difficult time.
On Saturday, the media personality took to Instagram to share videos and photos of himself wearing an oxygen mask while in a hospital bed at Southern Hills Hospital in Las Vegas.
Despite the concerning uploads, he made sure to note he “received the best care” from the medical staff and told his followers that he would “soon” explain what was wrong.