Heavy/Hallmark Jamie-Lynn Sigler talks about sepsis.
Star of the 2015 Hallmark film “The Christmas Note,” Jamie-Lynn Sigler has opened up about how she nearly died in 2023.
“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. 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,” Sigler said on the June 4 episode of her “MeSsy” podcast.
The health scare left her immensely sad.
“I had never in my life been more sad, felt more low. But what I learned from India was I had an inability to escape it. I had to sit in it; I would scream in pillows, I would cry to girlfriends, I reached out, I sat by myself, I got a therapist. I did all of these things I had never really done before and went through this process that was absolutely necessary,” she said.
Sigler didn’t disclose what the surgery was for.
“The Sopranos” actress has had her fair share of health issues over the years. However, she has kept many of those struggles private. In 2024, Sigler joined forces with Christina Applegate, who also has MS, for the “MeSsy” podcast. The two use the platform to talk candidly about MS.
Jamie-Lynn Sigler Was Diagnosed With Multiple Sclerosis
Sigler shared her multiple sclerosis diagnosis with the world in 2016. At the time, she’d been living with the autoimmune disorder for 15 years.
“I grew up with this idea that people are only going to be attracted to you when you’re perfect, and it’s quite the opposite. MS gave me my superpower, which is vulnerability, because the more raw and real and open I am — and this has forced me to be that — the more beautiful connections are,” she told People magazine in 2023.
Sigler has been able to continue working despite her diagnosis. She’s been fortunate to have production make some accommodations for her to make things a bit easier. When she was on “Big Sky,” for example, her trailer was moved closer to set so that she wouldn’t have to walk very far.
She also has the full support of her husband, Cutter Dykstra, whom she married in 2016. The couple share two boys, Beau, 10, and Jack, 5.
Jamie-Lynn Sigler Was Hospitalized at Age 19
Sigler had to be hospitalized due to debilitating symptoms when she was 19-years-old. At the time, her doctors didn’t know that she had MS.
“I all of a sudden felt like I had to pee so bad, like a bladder spasm, which I’d never experienced before. And then I would go to the bathroom and I couldn’t pee,” she said on the May 7 episode of the “MeSsy” podcast.
“I started getting that feeling right before pins and needles, like that heaviness numb. It started in my feet and then every day it was rising. It was in my ankles, in my calves, in my knees, in my thighs,” she continued.
“By the time it got to my hips, I remember I was on a plane back to New York and I called my dad. … and I said, ‘You need to pick me up from the airport, something’s wrong. I need you to take me to the hospital,'” she added. She was admitted to the ICU for two weeks.
And while many tests suggested that she didn’t have MS, that was ultimately her diagnosis.
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