Ashley Park is looking back on a scary health episode from earlier this year and grateful that her “Emily in Paris” costar helped her through it.
Park – who plays musically gifted Mindy on the hit Netflix show – spoke with Jesse Tyler Ferguson for Sony Music Entertainment’s ”Dinner’s On Me” podcast and reflected on her experience of having septic shock while on vacation in January.
“I became so possibly irreversibly sick that Paul (Forman) really saved my life,” Park said, adding that her illness was at one point so serious that she “almost wasn’t here.”
“I was in such pain and at a point where I really didn’t think I could ever laugh or breathe again deeply without, like, excruciating pain,” the actress said.
Park said she was on a trip to the Maldives with Forman – who plays Nicolas on “Emily in Paris” and is Park’s offscreen boyfriend – when she began experiencing symptoms of what she initially thought was tonsillitis. Her infection, however, soon “spread to many of my organs and I had pneumonia in both my lungs,” Park continued.
She was told on New Year’s Day that she had septic shock.
“I didn’t realize that there are different degrees of sepsis and that was the most severe one,” she said.
Septic shock is the last and most severe stage of sepsis, according to the Cleveland Clinic. When affected by sepsis, the body essentially overreacts to an infection, which can cause organs to shut down. In 2020, the Lancet journal reported that sepsis accounted for 1 in 5 deaths globally. Both sepsis and septic shock require immediate treatment.
Park reflected on how grateful she is for Forman, who was able to keep a cool head during her health scare and “not alarm” her when she was ill with a potentially fatal infection.
“It was really scary and I wasn’t able to process it because of the condition that I was in, and he was able to, and he was able to stay strong for me,” she said.
Park first discussed the health episode on social media in mid-January.
Of Forman, she wrote at the time: “You calmed my fears and held me through ambulances, three foreign hospitals, a week in the ICU, scary ERs, countless scans and tests and injections, excruciating pain, and so much confusion all while we were alone on the other side of the world far from those we know.”
“I love you Paul. More than I can ever say,” she added.