‘RHOC’ Star Vicki Gunvalson Reflects on Near-Death Health Scare After Suffering Sepsis

Vicki Gunvalson attends the 2013 Bravo New York Upfront at Pillars 37 Studios on April 3, 2013. Craig Barritt/Getty Images

Vicki Gunvalson, a television personality known for her role on Bravo’s hit reality show “The Real Housewives of Orange County,” has revealed that she recently experienced a serious health scare that nearly resulted in her death.

Gunvalson, 62, recounted her near-death experience in the latest installment of her podcast, “My Friend, My Soulmate, My Podcast,” sharing that she was diagnosed with sepsis, a potentially life-threatening condition that occurs when the body’s immune system begins to attack itself in response to an infection or injury.

“There’s a lot of hours missing in my life because I got, like, amnesia, semi-stroke,” she said during the episode, published on Aug. 26.

“Last Thursday, I went and got my hair done as usual, went on my way to the office, and there seems to be about an hour or two that I was missing,” she added. “I don’t know where I was.”

The reality star’s partner, Michael Smith, joined her during the episode to help fill in lapses in her memory. Smith’s daughter, Olivia—who is employed at Gunvalson’s firm, Coto Insurance, a life insurance agency located in Irvine, California—said Gunvalson did make it into the office that day. However, she said her speech was noticeably unintelligible.

“She said I was talking gibberish and I wrote an email out and the email didn’t make sense,” Gunvalson explained.

The Coto Insurance founder said she subsequently met with a client, who happened to be a retired emergency room physician.

“He got up and told Olivia that I was possibly having a stroke,” Gunvalson shared. “I don’t remember anything, and she took me to the hospital.”

Gunvalson—who served as a cast member on “The Real Housewives of Orange County” for 13 seasons, from 2006 to 2018—was diagnosed with a sinus infection and discharged from the hospital that evening. Smith, who was in Scottsdale, Arizona, at the time on a business trip, said he immediately booked a flight back home.

“One of the scariest things for me was when I walked in, for some reason, Vicki decided she wanted to take a bath. So she’s in the bathtub with water, and I walk in and she’s pretty much passed out,” he recounted. “That was scary, and I grabbed her, pulled her out of the water, put her in bed.”

‘Massive Infection’

Smith said Gunvalson slept for about 14 hours, but when she awoke, she appeared disoriented and was unable to walk.

Fearing that his girlfriend was suffering a stroke, Smith said he carried Gunvalson to his car and drove her to Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach, where she was diagnosed with “a massive infection” from pneumonia—one of the most common causes of sepsis, per the National Institutes of Health.

“I’m no doctor but with the way 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 to fight it,” Smith said, adding that he has also previously battled sepsis.

According to the Mayo Clinic, the symptoms of sepsis, which can arise from any type of infection, are rapid breathing, shivering, and an altered mental status. However, if left untreated, sepsis can progress to sepsis shock, which occurs when there is a severe drop in blood pressure. This can cause damage to the body’s organs, including the lungs, kidneys, and liver, and ultimately lead to death.

Gunvalson—who was hospitalized for about a week—said she was told during a recent call with her medical team that she had a 10 to 20 percent chance of survival when she was battling the infection.

“The lady said on the phone—she’s been calling me every day—and she said, ‘Yes, the sepsis that went to your body is deadly, and you survived it, and so you’re going to be okay.’”

Overcome with emotion, Gunvalson expressed gratitude to doctors for diagnosing her in time. “There was just a litany of things that could have happened and gone wrong and it didn’t,” she said. “So thank you, Jesus. But thank you, Michael, for being there for me.”

She added: “You know, maybe there’s still life ahead of me, of things I need to be doing.”