Celebrities who've opened up about their battles with sepsis
Sunday September 13 marks World Sepsis Day, a day to shed light and awareness on the life-threatening infection.
"Sepsis is a serious condition in which the body responds improperly to an infection," according to Mayo Clinic.
Some of the most common symptoms include a change in mental status, fast and shallow breathing, sweating for no clear reason, feeling lightheaded, shivering, and painful urination.
Mayo Clinic adds: "Symptoms of sepsis are not specific. They can vary from person to person, and sepsis may appear differently in children than in adults."
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It's crucial that sepsis is treated quickly as it can progress into septic shock, which is a life-threatening emergency.
Such triggers a dramatic drop in blood pressure that can cause damage to the lungs, kidneys, liver, and other vital organs.
Many celebrities have spoken out on their experience with sepsis and how they ultimately overcome it.
Whoopi Goldberg
The talk show host battled ill health with pneumonia and sepsis in 2019, an illness that nearly killed her.
Speaking on The View in February of that year, Goldberg said: "I am here. I am up and moving around. Not as fast as I’d like to be, but I am OK. I’m not dead.
"I came very, very close to leaving the Earth. Good news: I didn’t."
Perez Hilton
Perez Hilton spent 21 days in hospital after contracting sepsis earlier this year.
He explained in a YouTube video: "People die of sepsis. The day before I was hospitalized, I was in so much stomach pain. I was like, ‘This is weird, but it will go away.’ The next morning, I couldn’t walk. I had to be taken by ambulance to the hospital.”
Hilton underwent laparoscopic surgery, before recovering from sepsis.
The blogger continued: "It was such a slow process. I mean, two weeks of just sickness and then another week of getting better before I was released.
"The last week was hell, because I had already been in the hospital two weeks by then. I was like, ‘I just want to go home. I just want to be with my babies."
Billy Porter
The actor and singer was forced to forced to cut short an appearance on Broadway’s Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club after falling ill with sepsis.
Porter later explained on the Outlaws podcast that he was 'dead for three days'.
Doctors uncovered a kidney stone 'was trapped in [his] urethra', so he had to undergo surgery to save his life.
"When they got in there, there was so much puss and bile and infection behind the stone,” Porter explained. “It bubbled up, and I went uroseptic in minutes.”
Vicki Gunvalson
The TV personality was given just a '10 to 20 percent' change of surviving after falling ill with sepsis, after doctors initially believed she had a sinus infection.
Her boyfriend, Michael Smith, recalled finding Gunvalson passed out in the bath.
“It was actually sepsis, but it was pneumonia,” he explained on My Friend, My Soulmate, My Podcast. “And what happened — and I’m no doctor, but when they explained it — is that 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.”
Mikkey Dee
The Swedish musician developed sepsis in January 2025 after spraining his foot.
Speaking to Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet at the time, Dee said: "The ankle swelled up like hell, then it took on a weird shape and appearance and looked like an overcooked ham. I became very ill so I had to go by ambulance to Sahlgrenska and there they found that I had sky-high values, so I became priority one there. It was surgery right away, the first of three. They cut away what was dead and infected and badly infested."
Jamie-Lynn Sigler
It was in June 2024 when Sigler had a 'very bad reaction to a surgery' and developed sepsis.
“A little less than a year ago now is when I went to India and I lived in this ashram and I felt so awakened and connected and peaceful,” the singer explained on the MeSsy podcast. “And when I came home, two weeks later, I had a very bad reaction to a surgery and got sepsis and was in the hospital and almost died. I never told anybody this.”
Topics: Health, Whoopi Goldberg, Perez Hilton
Callum Jones