The Sopranos star Jamie-Lynn Sigler has opened up about a near-death experience that occurred last year.
During the latest episode of her and Christina Applegate’s MeSsy podcast, the actress recalled experiencing terrifying post-surgery complications after returning to the U.S. from an ashram in India.
“A little less than a year ago now is when I went to India, and I lived at this ashram, and I had felt so awakened and connected and peaceful,” Jamie-Lynn Sigler explained. “Two weeks later, I had a very bad reaction to a surgery and got sepsis and was in the hospital and almost died.”
Noting that she never told anyone about the incident, Sigler said, “Two weeks after a year ago, right now. I was in the hospital literally, like, this much away from death.”
The actress then said this and other incidents made 2023 her “year of grieving.” The experience made her “break down and cry” as well as “feel that stuff.”
“I had never in my life been more sad, felt more low,” Jamie-Lynn Sigler continued. “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…”
Sigler then said she finally sought help. “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.”
Applegate offered some motivating words to her friend. “I feel like you owe it to yourself to cry and really, really go there,” she encouraged. “Because how else are you going to have to bring it to the light?”
Jamie-Lynn Sigler Says the 2023 Septic Incident Was Very Different From Finding Out Her MS Was Progressing Earlier This Year
Jamie-Lynn Siglar continued the discussion by pointing out that the 2023 health incident was very different from what she went through earlier this year when she found out her multiple sclerosis (MS), was progressing.
Sigler was diagnosed with MS when she was 20 years old. Although the diagnosis had been stable for nearly 10 years, she said she felt frustrated doing physical therapy and trying to be healthy without any positive results.
Her doctor eventually sat her down and told her to “take responsibility off the table” and she could “change” her body or she “didn’t do enough or did too much.”
“And it was a moment I really needed to have,” she said. “It felt like it took so much pressure off of myself that I need to constantly be fixing myself or changing myself or healing myself.”
Jamie Lynn-Sigler continued to say that the discussion with the doctor really opened her eyes. “It felt like it was translating into, like, my spirituality and just trusting. The universe has my back,” she said.
“And it was a moment I desperately, desperately needed to the point where I even walked out, and my husband was like, ‘Your vibe is very different. You just feel a lot lighter.’ And I do.”