Billy Porter says he was 'dead for three days' after sepsis

Billy Porter called himself a “walking miracle” after a severe case of sepsis left him, he says, “dead for three days.” He described checking himself into the hospital “Tuesday night” in extreme pain and waking up “on Saturday [night],” after initially going in for a routine check to remove a kidney stone that was trapped in his urethra.

Porter said surgeons found “so much puss and bile and infection behind the stone. It bubbled up and I went eurosceptic in minutes, I was on the ECMO machine.” The Cleveland Clinic defines urosepsis as a type of sepsis that begins in the urinary tract when an infection goes untreated and travels to the kidneys.

As for the ECMO machine, the Mayo Clinic describes it as a form of life support. Doctors also had to cut him open on either side of his leg — from knee to hip — and leave it open for two days to save the limb after he developed compartment syndrome, when the muscles close on themselves and cut off all oxygen.

billy porter, sepsis, urosepsis, kidney stone, urethra, ecmo, compartment syndrome, infection, cleveland clinic, mayo clinic