Vicki Gunvalson will need some time to rest and refill her tank after a very scary health crisis.
The OG of Real Housewives of Orange County recently opened up about the medical emergency that she suffered earlier this month. Her first symptoms were amnesia and confusion. Once properly diagnosed and on the path to treatment, a doctor told Vicki that the “deadly” condition usually has a survival rate of only 10 to 20 percent.
Vicki Gunvalson’s ailment began with amnesia and “talking gibberish”
Vicki filled everyone in on the Monday episode of her and Christian Gray Snow’s podcast, My Friend, My Soulmate, My Podcast. She began with her first signs of trouble: “A lot of hours [of her memory were] missing” and she had trouble speaking sensically.
Vicki began, “There seems to be about an hour or two that I was missing and I don’t know where I was.” She recounted that she was “talking gibberish” to a client coming into her Coto Insurance office.
Luckily, that client was a retired doctor. He alerted Olivia, who works in the office and is the daughter of Vicki’s boyfriend, Michael Smith. The client was worried that Vicki could be “having a stroke.”
Vicki explained, “I don’t remember anything, and [Olivia] took me to the hospital.” While there, she was diagnosed with a sinus infection and given antibiotics. Olivia called her dad and insisted that he go home immediately to care for Vicki.
Michael was also a guest on the podcast and shared his experience. “She was lethargic and she really didn’t understand where she was.” He said that the doctors “kind of ran with” it just being a sinus infection since she’d recently had one.
Then, Michael said he had “one of the scariest” parts of the whole thing when he found Vicki passed out in the bathtub.
He shared, “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 hours straight.”
What was misdiagnosed as a sinus infection was actually pneumonia and sepsis
Michael rushed Vicki to the hospital. The situation was much more dire than just a sinus infection.
Michael revealed, “She had a massive infection. It was actually sepsis, but it was pneumonia…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.”
Vicki gets emotional thinking about her neurologist revealing to her that the condition usually has a “10 to 20 percent” chance of survival.
She held back tears. “I cry a lot, and Michael keeps saying, ‘Why do you keep crying?’ I don’t have an answer. I mean, rewind a week ago, we were in Barcelona walking 16 [to] 20,000 steps and we were having the time of our life, and three days later, [I’m in the hospital].”
Michael reassured everyone that Vicki’s coming out of the woods. “She will be fine. She’s coming out of it.”
We’re all wishing Vicki a speedy recovery!
The Real Housewives of Orange County continues Thursdays at 9/8c on Bravo.
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