90 Day Fiance star Yolanda Leak has revealed she was hospitalized several months ago with an apparent early case of coronavirus that left her in a coma for a month and on a ventilator for three weeks.
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RELATED LINK: '90 DAY FIANCE' COUPLES NOW: WHERE ARE THEY NOW? WHO IS STILL TOGETHER? WHO HAS SPLIT? (PHOTOS)
90 Day Fiance: Before the 90 Days' Season 4 cast Tell-All reunion had reportedly been set to film at a studio in New York City in March similar to past seasons, but due to the coronavirus pandemic, those plans ended up being postponed.
Instead, the show ended up filming a reunion remotely, with everyone participating via video conference -- and nearly ten hours of the footage leaked out online recently.
"I contracted the flu, but then it went away and it came back a few days later a lot stronger, and it knocked me into a coma. It turned into full-fledged pneumonia," Yolanda revealed in the leaked footage.
"I was in the hospital for, I guess, six weeks... I was in a coma for a month, yes. I was in a coma for a month on a ventilator and it was really bad."
The reunion's host, Shaun Robinson, asked Yolanda if she had been tested for COVID-19.
"No, because it happened December 2. So it wasn't prevalent; it wasn't out. You know, [coronavirus], the big scare, it wasn't out, which my doctor now believes that's what I had," Yolanda said.
On whether she has any plans to get an antibodies test, Yolanda replied, "No, not yet. They just want to keep watching me, because it was just so bad. It was bad, really bad. It took over my lungs, so that's why they [now think] it was coronavirus. But no one knew about it [then]. And then was on December 2, 2019."
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Yolanda elaborated on why she was in the hospital so long.
"I was in a coma because my lungs were failing, my kidneys were failing, everything -- all of my major organs were failing," Yolanda shared.
RELATED LINK: '90 DAY FIANCE' COUPLES NOWYolanda admitted "it was a mess" for her frightened children.
"They stayed by my side the whole time, and my family came up to be with them. So it was a big scare, it really was. And now I see how the big thing with [coronavirus] is just taking people out, I was like, right there, on my way out! So it's a blessing that I'm here," Yolanda said.
Yolanda, however, insisted, "I'm doing a lot better, thank God. I'm doing a lot better."
Raw footage also leaked of Yolanda chatting with her 90 Day Fiance: Before the 90 Days co-stars Lisa Hamme, Ash Naeck, Usman Umar and David Murphey during a subsequent break in filming.
"I think I already had [coronavirus]," Yolanda shared with the group. "I think I had corona. I had it because I was in a coma for a month and I was on a ventilator for three weeks... Yeah, I was in a coma for a month and I was on a ventilator for three weeks."
"My lungs had failed and my kidneys had failed and my liver failed. Everything failed from this virus, but they wasn't calling it corona."
RELATED LINK: '90 DAY FIANCE: BEFORE THE 90 DAYS' COUPLES NOW: WHERE ARE THEY NOW? WHO IS STILL TOGETHER? WHO HAS SPLIT? (PHOTOS)
Lisa, a hospice caregiver, said she believes Yolanda definitely had coronavirus because "regular pneumonia does not cause that much damage."
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Lisa advised Yolanda to live every day to the fullest, and Yolanda replied, "Definitely."
Yolanda got into even more details of how her sickness began by telling the group she pretty much gets the flu every year, like a bad cold that's coupled with body aches.
"I was so happy. I only had it for three days. It went away. But then I think, like, two days later, I had a fever. And I'm like, 'Wait a minute, I thought the flu was gone,'" Yolanda said.
Yolanda then recalled the terrifying details that led up to her hospital admittance.
"So the fever went to 107 and I was in bed taking medication, and my daughter said I slid down the steps. She said she was sitting in the dining room and I just slid down the steps, and that's when she knew something was wrong," Yolanda explained to her castmates.
"She said when I slid down the steps I walked over to -- I don't remember any of this -- I walked over to the couch and I just laid there and she couldn't get me to talk or anything. So that's when she called 911 and that's when the coma started."
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Yolanda therefore confirmed she went into a coma while still in her home.
"So I was rushed to the hospital and the emergency room was shocked because they said I was the youngest one in ICU but doctors couldn't figure out why I was the sickest one. I was the sickest one they had seen in a long time to come into the hospital," Yolanda said.
As shown on 90 Day Fiance: Before the 90 Days' fourth season, Yolanda thought she found true love with a man named Williams, a 40-year-old from England.
Yolanda intended to travel to England and meet Williams for the first time in person after getting to know each other online and over the phone, but the situation became sketchy when she tried to make concrete plans.
Williams couldn't tell Yolanda which airport to fly into, and he became harder to reach the more Yolanda needed information from him.
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Not only did Williams' Instagram profile mysteriously disappear -- with Williams telling Yolanda it had been hacked -- but Yolanda's kids discovered stock photos on the Internet of the muscular man claiming to be Williams.
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The photos Karra and Damante found by doing a reverse-image search on the Internet were the same ones Williams had privately sent Yolanda during their intimate chats.
90 Day Fiance viewers are therefore being led to believe Williams may not even exist and there is someone who is scamming Yolanda, potentially a man from Nigeria based on Karra's online findings.
Yolanda revealed to Shaun during the reunion that Williams has no idea she was so sick for so long.
At the time Yolanda filmed the Tell-All, she told Shaun that she had hired a private investigator to track Williams down and find out information for her.
"No, I didn't tell him because we had a brief conversation a couple of months ago when I got home from the hospital, but it was so brief, I didn't even get a chance to tell him that I was that sick," Yolanda claimed.
"He was just telling me where he's been and what he's up to. He just lost his aunt as well, so he was telling me he was grieving... so I didn't want to bring up my sickness to him because he was already in a bad place."
Yolanda said Williams reached out to her at that point following a long period of no contact. Yolanda explained Williams initially stopped calling her because he was offended when she had asked whether he's Nigerian.
90 Day Fiance: Before the 90 Days currently airs on Sunday nights at 8PM ET/PT on TLC.
RELATED LINK: '90 DAY FIANCE: BEFORE THE 90 DAYS' COUPLES NOW: WHERE ARE THEY NOW? WHO IS STILL TOGETHER? WHO HAS SPLIT? (PHOTOS)
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About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski
