Singer Jeremih details severe COVID-19 battle, says his heart 'stopped beating' and kidneys 'went out'
Jeremih is recovering from COVID-19, a battle which nearly took his life.
The 33-year-old R&B singer called in to SiriusXM’s Sway in the Morning and opened up about a “rare” complication he developed causing organ failure.
“What I can say is man, it definitely is real,” he told Sway Calloway on Tuesday. “I didn’t take it for granted and truth be told this is kind of, one of those, I’m a living, walking testimony.”
Jeremih, real name is Jeremy Phillip Felton, was intubated in the ICU where he said he saw a “white light.”
“I had the tube down my throat for about a week and a half. I was really, like, in a dream. And I ain’t gonna lie, I woke up about two times and all I remember is just seeing a white light, you know those two times that I was in there,” he explained. “What I ended up having, and I don’t mind sharing it cause now, you know, I’m here, it’s called [multisystem inflammatory syndrome], MIS, which is a rare case of, you know, cause and effect of COVID.”
According to the CDC, multisystem inflammatory syndrome is a condition where different body parts can become inflamed, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes or gastrointestinal organs. Early in the pandemic, extreme inflammation was reported almost exclusively in children (MIS-C), but it can be found in adults as well (MIS-A), sometimes weeks after a person has the virus.
“All my insides, all my organs became inflamed. It was going down, everything was just — my heart went out, stopped beating and started beating irregularly. My kidneys went out,” Jeremih shared, adding his liver started “to go bad.”
“I didn’t know what was going on at the time,” Jeremih continued. “I was out. Once I was removed from the ICU after that week, week and a half, I was just going through recovery where I had to learn how to walk again, eat, all that.”
Jeremih recently shared a photo from the hospital.
“Thank God I’m still here,” he wrote on Instagram.
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