Brooke Shields is now feeling “very [liberated]” following her recent health scare.
“I had a full-blown grand mal seizure on Thursday before [my solo] show [in New York City]. Nobody knows about it,” Shields, 58, told Glamour in her November cover story, which was published on Wednesday, November 1.
Shields recalled that she was busy preparing for her September cabaret show at Manhattan’s Café Carlyle when she started exhibiting symptoms.
“I was drinking so much water, and I didn’t know I was low in sodium. I was waiting for an Uber. I get down to the bottom of the steps, and I start evidently looking weird, and [the people I was with] were like, ‘Are you OK?’” she remembered. “Then I walked to the corner — no reason at all. I’m like, ‘Why am I out here?’ Then I walk into the restaurant L’Artusi, and I go to the sommelier who had just taken an hour to watch my run-through. I go in, two women come up to me; I don’t know them. Everything starts to go black.”
Shields’ hands then dropped “to [her] side” and she went “headfirst into the wall.”
“I start having a grand mal seizure,” the actress shared. “It means frothing at the mouth, totally blue, trying to swallow my tongue. The next thing I remember, I’m being loaded into an ambulance. I have oxygen on. … And Bradley f–king Cooper is sitting next to me holding my hand.”
After Shields collapsed at the NYC eatery, an employee tried to reach her husband, Chris Henchy. The L’Artusi staffer was only able to reach Henchy’s assistant, who in turn called Cooper’s own employee since the actor happened to be nearby in the city.
According to Shields, Cooper’s assistant called him and said, “Brooke’s on the ground. Chris isn’t around. Go get her.” Cooper, 48, quickly arrived at the restaurant and helped Shields get in an ambulance to a local hospital.
“Then it was like I walked in with Jesus,” Shields added to Glamour. “I couldn’t really get any words out. But I thought to myself, This is what death must be like. You wake up and Bradley Cooper’s going, ‘I’m going to go to the hospital with you, Brooke,’ and he’s holding my hand. And I’m looking at my hand, I’m looking at Bradley Cooper’s hand in my hand, and I’m like, ‘This is odd and surreal.’”
Since the seizure occurred just days before her Carlyle debut, Shields asked her doctor to “get me better” in time for the set. She underwent a series of EEGs and had catheters and IVs.
“I was stuck. And then they put me into ICU and that’s where I got bronchitis,” she said, noting doctors diagnosed her with low sodium in part because she was drinking “too much” water. “I flooded my system and I drowned myself. And if you don’t have enough sodium in your blood or urine or your body, you can have a seizure.”
She continued: “And then male doctors kept asking me if I was limiting my salt. And I said, ‘You know what? I’ve had it with male doctors. I know you’re all smart — smarter than I am in what you do. But let me just tell you something: I look younger when I’m bloated. If I’m bloated, people think I’ve had Botox. So as a 58-year-old woman, I’m not limiting my salt, OK? Stop trying to make me a crazy actress or a female that doesn’t know what the f–k they’re doing.’”
Shields deduced that she had been drinking “too much water” because she felt dehydrated in her Carlyle rehearsals. “I was singing more than I’ve ever sung in my life and doing a show and a podcast,” she noted.
