Jeannie Mai Details How She "Almost Died": "I Was Literally Gasping For Air"

She says she was just hours away from her throat closing up, blocking her airway.

What she thought was a sore throat ended up being much more serious for Jeannie Mai. The Real host was participating in Dancing With the Stars when she began to feel as if something was wrong with her throat. As the days progressed, her pain increased until she finally had to cancel a dance practice with her partner. Jeannie has shared bits of her recovery since the news was first revealed in early November, but the talk show host recently detailed her experience, mentioning that she was close to death.

Cindy Ord / Staff / Getty Images

“I got sick, but it was just, what I thought, a sore throat. That morning that I felt my sore throat I went to go rehearse with Brandon at seven in the morning and I was very tired but I had a long day of shooting after that,” said Jeannie. “I went from Brandon’s rehearsal then to a long shoot that was freezing cold where the illness I had quickly caught on and got worse because I was sitting under an air conditioning vent that just got me freezing cold and made me plummet into actually getting sick.”

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“What I was dancing with was a numb neck because I couldn’t feel anything when it was really closing up,” she added. “My throat was 60 percent closed. It was numb, but it was closed. After I went home, I wrote a letter to Jeezy and said, ‘Hey, I’m going to go to bed at like 9:30. I feel terrible. Please pray for me because I think that if I don’t make it through this I don’t know if I’m going to make it through camera blocking.'”

She woke up hours later and couldn’t breathe. “I was literally like gasping for air,” said Jeannie. “I don’t want to wake up J so I crawl out of bed, I go and grab some Aspirin to reduce the swelling … the Aspirin sticks on the back of my tongue and doesn’t go down because there’s no hole.” Jeezy rushed her to the hospital where she later learned that an abscess in her throat was swelling. If she hadn’t sought help, it would have only been a few more hours before her airway was completely closed. Jeannie underwent emergency surgery and has been quietly recovering ever since.

Watch Jeannie tell her harrowing tale below.

[via]