What happened to ‘Emily in Paris’ and ‘Beef’ star Ashley Park and why was she hospitalized?

Fans of the parts of Emily in Paris that aren’t about Emily in Paris were concerned this week to learn that Ashley Park, who plays Mindy Chen on the Netflix series, has been absolutely going through it.

On the bright side, Park described herself as “grateful” – things could, as she points out, have been substantially worse. But “could have been worse” doesn’t mean “wasn’t terrible,” and Park’s year got off to a particularly rough start.

Asley Park’s recent health scare and why she was in the hospital, explained

According to Park’s post, a holiday trip abroad took a bad turn when she came down with a case of tonsillitis overseas. Tonsillitis shouldn’t generally be a big deal – people have been performing tonsillectomies for centuries, and they’re generally considered to be one of those surgeries that doctors can perform hungover without their glasses on. 

Unfortunately, medical science is still a science, and science is still a giant pain. Park’s surgery wound up being one of the rare ones that goes terribly wrong, and the 31-year-old actress ended up suffering from septic shock.

Septic shock is a complicated, unenviable condition, and one that needs to be taken seriously and treated immediately once spotted. It starts as sepsis, in which the body’s immune system decides to attack its own tissue in response to an infection. Its symptoms are eerily tough to predict, and include everything from shivering and breathing too quickly to just kind of feeling weird. 

According to the Mayo Clinic’s fun, easy-to-digest synopsis on the subject, sepsis reaches its final form by progressing into septic shock, in which the body’s blood pressure drops dramatically, affecting the organs. It’s a dangerously bad time, with levels of seriousness ranging from “bad” to “really, really bad.” The NIH claims that patients with abdominal sepsis experience mortality rates of around 70%. Without knowing the details of Park’s case, it’s impossible to know what caused her to go through all of this.

For Park’s part, she seems to have gotten through the worst of her ordeal in strong if somber spirits. In the social media post announcing what she’d been through, she thanked her team of medical professionals, as well as her partner, fellow Emily in Paris actor Paul Forman, who she praised for having been “unconditionally” by her side over the holidays.

This wasn’t Park’s first brush with a serious medical condition. At 15, she was diagnosed with leukemia before being treated with chemotherapy. It’s unclear whether Park’s condition will have any effect on the shooting schedule for her currently only confirmed future project, the fourth season of Emily in Paris. Still, her Instagram post seems hopeful. “I’m healing and I promise I’m gonna be okay,” she wrote.