Jamie-Lynn Sigler revealed she faced a near death experience after a transformative trip to India.
“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,” Sigler, 43, said on the Tuesday, June 4, episode of her “MeSsy” podcast, which was recorded earlier this year. “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.”
Cohost Christina Applegate appeared surprised by her pal’s admission, exclaiming, “Oh, my God!”
Sigler noted that she was “this much away” from death and 2023 became her “year of grieving” following the health scare.
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“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,” she said. “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.”
Sigler has been candid about her health battles through the years. In 2016, the Sopranos alum publicly revealed her multiple sclerosis struggle for the first time, nearly 15 years after she was diagnosed with the autoimmune condition.
“I already had a big career,” she said during an appearance on Fox News at the time. “It was difficult to accept.”
Despite her struggles, Sigler exclusively told Us Weekly that the disease wasn’t going to impact motherhood.
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“I’m human. Are there days where I wonder, ‘Would I have been a little bit more patient if I wasn’t struggling physically?’ It makes you question everything in your life. It affects every area of your life,” Sigler said in September 2023. “But I think that when I put my kids to bed and I see the connection that we have and I know that that’s completely unaffected no matter what I physically can or can’t do.”
Sigler, who shares her sons Beau, 10, and Jack, 6, with her husband, Cutter Dykstra, opened up about the challenges she faces while parenting with the disease.
“It’s honest and real and so it’s different the way I have to discuss it with both of them,” she told Us. “But I am always encouraging them to express their feelings about it because when you live with a chronic illness … it’s like the whole family has to deal with it. It’s in all of our lives.”
