Dodd, 48, wished her former Real Housewives of Orange County costar, 62, a speedy recovery after Gunvalson shared that she was recently hospitalized for a serious infection with a “10 to 20 percent [chance of] survival.”
“I knew @vickigunvalson almost died because [her boyfriend] Mike Smith called me and said she almost died. Sorry @michaelsmith0522 and told me not to say anything!!” Dodd captioned a photo of her and Gunvalson via Instagram on Monday, August 26. “So I didn’t say anything to anybody!! See I can keep a secret! I spoke to my friend @vickigunvalson and she is surviving! I love you Vicki and I wish you a speedy recovery.”
Followers were quick to issue their concerns and well wishes for the Coto Insurance founder in the comments section of Dodd’s post.
“So scary, glad she’s okay,” wrote one Instagram user, while another said, “Omg this can’t be real. I pray she is okay. I have met her, and she is full of love and joy. Please get better, Vicki.”
Gunvalson reflected on her recent health scare on the August 26 episode of her “My Friend, My Soulmate, My Podcast” podcast, bringing along boyfriend to help her tell her story.
“There’s a lot of hours missing in my life because I got, like, amnesia,” she explained before recalling going to the hair salon “as usual” earlier this month. Noting that “there seems to be about an hour or two that I was missing and I don’t know where I was,” Gunvalson went on to tell listeners that after she got back to the office, a client – who happened to be a retired ER physician – noticed that something was off, as she was “talking gibberish” and “wrote an email out” that “didn’t make sense.”
“He got up and told [Michael’s daughter] Olivia that I was possibly having a stroke, we didn’t know,” Gunvalson continued. “I don’t remember anything and [Olivia] took me to the hospital.”
The Bravo personality said she was misdiagnosed with a sinus infection before being discharged the same night. Smith noted that Gunvalson did have a sinus infection that felt “different” a few weeks prior, saying that it “lasted longer” than normal and took a toll on her overall wellbeing.
Smith was out of state when Gunvalson’s medical episode occurred. After his daughter called him to come home, he found Gunvalson “pretty much passed out” while taking a bath. He put her to bed, explaining that a doctor – who ran with her previous sinus infection diagnosis – told him she needed sleep. After “13, 14 hours” of straight sleep, Smith brought her to the hospital after she woke up disoriented, fearing she had a stroke.
“She had a massive infection,” Smith explained. “It was actually sepsis, but it was pneumonia. And what happened — and I’m no doctor, but when they explained it — is that when your body is fighting that big of an infection and that dangerous of an infection, your whole body attacks it, which affects the brain and everything else in your body because your body sends everything it has to fight it.”
Though recovery has been a long process, Gunvalson is now on the mend, and Smith assured fans that she is “doing better” thanks to her friends and loved ones.
“She will be fine,” he said. “She’s coming out of it.”
