Death in Paradise star Shaquille Ali-Yebuah has shared how he was hospitalised for weeks while on what should have been a short trip to Los Angeles.
The British actor, who joined the long-running BBC cosy crime show last year as Officer Sebastien Rose, shared how he thought he was suffering from a chest infection, only to be told it was a collapsed lung.
The 31-year-old shared a carousel of photos and videos to Instagram detailing his ‘wild month’, and how it had coincided with the devastating loss of his cousin.
Posting a photo alongside his cousin, with a broken-heart emoji above his head, the Death in Paradise actor wrote: ‘Right before they wheeled me into surgery, I got news my cousin got killed by police back home in Jamaica.’
Detailing another heartbreak during the frightening health episode, he added: ‘Imagine trying to process a death while somebody’s asking you to sign papers in case YOU don’t wake up.
‘I wake up from surgery, body cut up full of tubes, grateful I made it – just to hear my other lil cousin got locked up.’
Alongside a photo of himself in a hospital gown and hooked up to an IV in Beverly Hills Cedars-Sinai Hospital, he described his ‘four weeks of survival’.
Ali-Yebuah said he had visited the hospital with chest pains and shortness of breath, to learn his lung had collapsed five days prior.
After undergoing surgery, the actor spent two weeks recovering in the hopes of getting the all-clear to fly back to filming. Production on series 16 and 17 got underway earlier this year, filming on the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe.
But Ali-Yebuah said an X-ray showed his lung had collapsed a second time, writing: ‘It was almost like life was forcing me to be still.
‘Three surgeries in four weeks… hated needles, now I’m getting injected two times a day for blood, a fear became a daily routine.’
In one clip posted to his 25,000 followers, he lay in bed before surgery for the second lung collapse and said he had lost eight kilos since entering hospital.
In another video, he showed the TV news during rolling coverage on the death of Dolly Parton, writing that it was ‘every day bad news’.
‘Death felt way too present while I was lying there fighting to breathe, alone with my thoughts,’ he added.
But in another video from his hospital stay, Ali-Yebuah said he had met a doctor in Los Angeles who turned out to be a Death in Paradise fan.
He wrote: ‘I was worried about scenes I was missing… then life gave me a role where the only thing that mattered was making it to the next scene. They say you only live once, but I don’t agree; I say you only DIE once. You LIVE every day, make it count.’
Metro contacted Shaquille Ali-Yebuah’s representative for further comment.