Sarah Silverman ‘Lucky To Be Alive’ After Health Scare

Image by getty images
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 the swollen epiglottis, which can result in cardiac arrest and death, according to the U.S. 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.”
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion My Jewish moms group ousted me because I work for J Street. Is this what communal life has come to?
- 2
Opinion I co-wrote Biden’s antisemitism strategy. Trump is making the threat worse
- 3
Opinion Stephen Miller’s cavalier cruelty misses the whole point of Passover
- 4
Film & TV How Marlene Dietrich saved me — or maybe my twin sister — and helped inspire me to become a lifelong activist
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion Trump’s followers see a savior, but Jewish historians know a false messiah when they see one
-
Fast Forward Trump administration can deport Mahmoud Khalil for undermining U.S. foreign policy on antisemitism, judge rules
-
Opinion This Passover, let’s retire the word ‘Zionist’ once and for all
-
Opinion Passover teaches us why Jews should stand with Mahmoud Khalil
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.