‘Wheel of Fortune’ Host Pat Sajak Reveals He Thought He Was Dying During Emergency Surgery

Pat Sajak thought he was on the brink of death as he was rushed into emergency surgery last month for a blocked intestine. The Wheel of Fortune host told Good Morning America that he’s back to his old self after the health scare, revealing just how close he thought he was to losing everything in a moment before doctors operated.

Things took a turn for the worse when Sajak came back from his morning walk with his daughter, when he told the outlet he felt a “horrific pain” in his stomach.

“I didn’t know what it [was] — but within two and a half hours, I was in surgery,” Sajak admitted. “It was that quick and intense.”

Sajak’s pain was quickly determined to be the result of a blocked intestine, which had caused his blood pressure to dramatically fall and bring the longtime TV host close to death.

“You couldn’t do anything. I was in [a] fetal position, lying on the bed,” he recalled. “They try to give you various drugs for the pain. And none of it — none — was working. And then they gave me something, I couldn’t even tell you the name of it, but suddenly, I wasn’t thinking about the pain. I just had these beautiful pastels and lovely faces coming out of it.”

“In the background, I could hear my wife and daughter talking. It sounded like they were a mile off, but they were right next to me,” he continued. “They were talking to each other. And I remember thinking, not in a morbid way, ‘I think this must be death. This must be what death is like.’”

Sajak added with his signature sense of humor, “Hearing their voices, I thought, ‘Boy, their lives are gonna change now.’ And I felt badly for them. I didn’t feel badly about dying. I felt badly that they were gonna have to deal with the aftermath. As it turned out, I was just high.”

On the other side of surgery, Sajak revealed he is back to his old self.

“I’m feelin’ great,” he said, revealing his return to Wheel will come sooner rather than later. “I’ve actually felt ridiculously good for several weeks. I’ve been back in the studio actually, doing shows. Even spinning the wheel and, you know, nothing has popped. So I think it’s OK.”

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