Soap Vet Patrika Darbo Reveals Health Update From The Hospital

Soap opera veteran Patrika Darbo is known for her bubbly personality, especially when raising money for the various charities she works with, but it wasn’t her enthusiasm that was infectious this week — she was worried about her health.

Patrika Darbo Checks In

Darbo, who first graced our Days of our Lives screens back in 1998 as Chloe’s mom, Nancy Wesley, and until recently was Sally’s Aunt Shirley on The Bold and the Beautiful, posted an update to her Instagram account on Friday that showed her in a hospital gown — and it was scary in this era of the coronavirus. But her update was reasonably good news, especially on that front.

“St. Joe’s hospital in Burbank. NO CORONA. A bleeding ulcer yippee!!!” she wrote alongside the image. Not a diagnosis one would usually be thrilled about but in this case, it is certainly understandable. “Should be home today. Y’all stay safe and home.. self-quarantine. Thank you to everyone. I’m good you stay that way too.”

Soap Hub reached out to the soap vet via email to find out what happened and how she’s doing currently. She shared that there were certainly some scary moments.

A Scary Time

“Home now. My body aches!!!” she said upfront before going into detail about what happened. “On Wednesday, I woke up feeling like I had indigestion. We’d had pizza for dinner. I had one piece as the pepperoni [was] too spicy. Anyway, I just kind of walked around then asked [my husband] Rolf to pat my back,” she wrote.

Patrika Darbo did that thinking that would make her feel better and ease the discomfort, but things quickly got worse. “Suddenly, I felt like I was going to throw up, so I ran to the bathroom and just vomited blood. Scary.”

During any normal time, that would be frightening enough but considering what’s going on in emergency rooms, it was even more harrowing. “I didn’t want to go to the hospital with everything going on and knew I didn’t have the virus. I just didn’t want to add to doctors and nurses’ work — they’ve got enough on their plates.

“So I called Urgent care and she said GO NOW TO EMERGENCY ROOM. Rolf drove me to St Joe’s. He had to drop me off. He couldn’t get out of the car. A guard checks you in in the parking lot. I got checked in very fast — the place was empty. So the doctor did a CAT scan, saw blood in my stomach and did endoscopic surgery where they cauterize a bleeding ulcer.”

The soap vet stayed overnight and then was sent home. She has more advice for fans to avoid what happened to her. “Don’t take anything but Tylenol for pain. Ibuprofen is your enemy!!”