Stephen Colbert Speaks out on Health Scare

Stephen Colbert is back on The Late Show after taking several weeks off recovering from a ruptured appendix, telling his audience Monday that the burst organ eventually led to blood poisoning, which hospitalized him and in the end caused him to quickly drop 14 pounds. Colbert sat behind his desk for the first time in three weeks, as his last episode aired on Nov. 22 ahead of Thanksgiving.

"It's so lovely to see all of you," Colbert told his studio audience. "The last time I was sitting at this desk, which was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I was in a heap of trouble. I was not aware of the amount of trouble I was in." Colbert explained that he began feeling pain after David Letterman appeared as a guest on the show, waking up "just in abdominal agony" the next morning. Despite the pain, he decided to move forward with recording two episodes that day so that his staff could have time off for Thanksgiving. 

"How bad could it be?" he recalled thinking. "Turns out, extremely bad." Colbert joked that the pain was "manageable," as it "only hurt when I moved and when I didn't." Holding it together for two monologues, two second acts and an interview with Bradley Cooper, the late-night host was "not prepared" for an impromptu dance moment that came during his cooking segment with José Andrés. "I don't want to get too technical here: I was dying," he shared. "My insides had become what the Spanish call 'paella.'"

Finishing the show, Colbert said he had a "raging fever" and was driven to the hospital, where doctors confirmed his appendix had already burst. "They said when they opened it up, it was like they shot John Wick 5 down there," the comedian joked. "They gotta take out the appendix, and then they gotta clean everything out. And I don't want to get into too much detail here, but basically, they go in there with a power washer and a shop vac. ...They don't know why the appendix goes bad because they don't know why they go good. They have no idea what it does. All they know is at some point it just turns around to the pancreas and says, 'I bet I could kill this guy.'"

The TV host went on to thank the medical staff at St. Barnabas Hospital in New York City and his staff at The Late Show, as they "truly went beyond the call of duty to get me through that taping and propping me up." He also ultimately thanked his burst appendix, "because you giving me blood poisoning helped me lose 14 pounds. Ladies, gentlemen, you heard it here first. Appendicitis is the new Ozempic."