Sarah Silverman reveals she almost DIED after 'sore throat' was epiglottitis

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Comedian Silverman, 45, revealed Wednesday she spent last week in ICU
She thought she had a sore throat but a doctor said it was epiglottitis
That's an inflammation of the throat that can cut off air and kill in minutes
She was drugged and strapped down while a tube was pushed in her throat
The sedatives left her so confused she thought she'd been in an accident

Published: 18:28 EST, 6 July 2016 | Updated: 13:28 EST, 7 July 2016

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Comedian and actress Sarah Silverman revealed Wednesday that she could have died last week after she mistook a deadly disease for a simple sore throat.

Silverman, 45, best known for her edgy stand-up material, announced on her official Facebook account that she had just spent the last week in intensive care at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

'I am insanely lucky to be alive,' she said. 'Don't even know why I went to the doctor, it was just a sore throat. But I had a freak case of epiglottitis.'

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Hospitalized: Comedian Sarah Silverman (pictured) was hospitalized last week after being diagnosed with epiglottitis - a potentially fatal throat swelling. She said Wednesday that she mistook it for a simple sore throat

Epiglottitis is an inflammation of the epiglottis - the flap at the bottom of the tongue that stops food from falling into the windpipe.

The disease constitutes a medical emergency because if the swelling is bad enough, it can completely cover the windpipe, cutting off air and causing death within minutes.

The comedian, whose recent past has been shadowed by deaths - including her 73-year-old mom, Beth Ann O'Hara, and friend and comedy writer Harris Wittels last year and long-time pal Garry Shandling in March - found herself in a thoughtful mood after her recovery.

She wrote: 'There's something that happens when three people you're so close to die within a year and then YOU almost die but don't. (That was me. I'm the one that didn't die.)

'It's a strange dichotomy between, "Why me?" and the other, "Why me?"'

Recovery from epiglottitis can require an intubation tube to be inserted into the person's throat to make sure their airway stays open - and for Silverman that was even more frightening than it sounds.

'They couldn't put me fully to sleep for the recovery process because my blood pressure's too low, she said.

'I was drugged just enough to not feel the pain and have no idea what was happening or where I was.

'They had to have my hands restrained to keep me from pulling out my breathing tube. My friend Stephanie said I kept writing "was I in an accident?"'

Thoughtful: Silverman, who lost her mom and a close friend last year, was both thoughtful and funny in the Facebook post, as she talked about how she was so sedated she had no idea where she was

She continued: 'When I woke up five days later I didn't remember anything.

'I thanked everyone at the ICU for my life, went home, and then slowly as the opiates faded away, remembered the trauma of the surgery & spent the first two days home kind of free-falling from the meds/lack of meds and the paralyzing realization that nothing matters.

'Luckily that was followed by the motivating revelation that nothing matters.'

Silverman said she was moved by boyfriend Michael Sheen, a 'real-life hero,' as well as her sisters and friends. 'It makes me cry,' she said, 'Which hurts my throat. So stop.'

She also thanked all of the doctors that helped her as well as 'every nurse, every technician and orderly whose punch-the-clock jobs happen to save lives.'

Perhaps not wanting to be too mawkish, Silverman signed off with a light moment from her ordeal.

'I couldn't speak for a while and I don't remember a lot of my "lucid" time,' she said, but a friend 'but Amy ... told me I stopped a nurse - like it was an emergency - furiously wrote down a note and gave it to her.

'When she looked at it, it just said, "Do you live with your mother?" next to a drawing of a penis.'