Whoopi Goldberg revealed that she was back in the hospital less than a month after fighting off pneumonia and sepsis. The revelation comes less than a month after the comedian and longtime co-host returned to The View.
Goldberg made the announcement on Monday’s episode, noting that she was taken back into care for a 24-hour bug according to Entertainment Tonight.
Videos by PopCulture.com
“I am here. I’m much better. I’m much, much better,” Goldberg said on the show. “I had a 24-hour bug, which landed me back in the hospital last week, which is why I missed y’all on Thursday.”
According to ET, the bug was far less serious than the previous health scare. The comedian added that it “came and went,” allowing her to return to the show in good health.
“I seem to be doing well,” Goldberg said. “I’m here.”
Goldberg had been missing from The View since early February. She announced her imminent return to the show in a video message back on March 14.
“Hey, yes, it’s me. I am here. I am up and moving around — not as fast as I’d like to be. I am O.K. I’m not dead,” she opened the video with. “I had pneumonia and I was septic. Pneumonia in both lungs, which meant there was fluid there was all kinds of stuff going on…I came very, very close to leaving the earth.”
Goldberg has been part of The View since 2007 and hasn’t shown signs of stopping until her illness sidelined her. The host made her return the following week in a surprise appearance that shocked her fellow hosts and earned a standing ovation from the crowd.
Upon her return, the host expanded upon her illness and what it felt like working through it.
“You think you can push through because you got a little cold, you say, ‘I’m just gonna keep going, keep going.’ And you think because you’ve healed quickly before that something crazy can’t happen. Well, it can,” Goldberg revealed on during her return to television. “I had double pneumonia and sepsis… and so they had to pump a lot of stuff out of me. This is a cautionary tale for all of us. You must really take care of yourself because there is little, tiny stuff out there that will kill you that you never think of.”
She also admitted that the scariest moment was when her doctor told her she came close to dying.
“That was like, ‘Uhhh actually, no, I hadn’t thought of it.’ He said, ‘Well, you need to think of it. You need to be really clear about what this is.’”
The news of her illness had some of her fellow View co-hosts fearing the worst too. Sunny Hostin opened up about Whoopi’s place on the show and how scary her absence had been.
“It’s been so wonderful to have [Goldberg] back,” Hostin told the outlet. “It’s been very scary. What most people didn’t know is that we were visiting her in the hospital, so I had the chance to see her very, very sick, and it was scary because she is our rock and our moderator.”
