Chad Michael Murray opened up about a terrifying near-death experience that left him in the hospital for two months.
While appearing on the Friday, August 8, episode of the “Great Company” podcast, Murray, 43, recalled facing a life-threatening health crisis when he was 15. He explained that his intestines became twisted, which caused internal bleeding.
“I was hospitalized for two and a half months. It was a lot,” he shared, adding that he was “in and out of consciousness” while in the hospital. “We had surgery. I had internal bleeding, I lost 50 percent of my blood. I was on my deathbed.”
His condition was so severe that his family even called in a priest to give him his last rites.
“I just remember seeing my father, the weakest I’d ever seen him, and a priest at the end of my bed. They’re talking about last rites and all that stuff, and [the nurse, Sandy] gave me a blood transfusion to save my life,” Murray said. ”It saved my life.”
The One Tree Hill alum said that his “organs shut down because you have blood all coagulated around them, and they had to wait till everything [healed more].” He then had to have “a second surgery to clean everything up.”
Murray also revealed that the experience was the “scariest thing ever” because he lost a concerning amount of weight.
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“I got out. I went from, like, 180 to 118 pounds. I was a skeleton when I got out,” he said. “I remember looking in the mirror the first time going, ‘Who is that?’ Like, I cried. I couldn’t believe that I was looking back at that guy.”
The hospital stay was life changing in many ways, as one nurse named Alana inspired him to pursue an acting and model career.
“Alana says to me, ‘Oh gosh, you should model,’” he recalled. “I was like, ‘I don’t want to model. I want to be an actor. Like, I love film and television. I want to give this gift to other people.’ And she’s like, ‘Well, you can segue from modeling into acting. Look, when you get out, I’m hooking you up with this modeling company I know.’ And she meant it.”