Brooke Shields suffered a grand mal seizure after drinking too much water

Brooke Shields had a frightening experience in September when she was rushed to the hospital after suffering a grand mal seizure in New York City, just a week prior to the opening of her one-woman show. According to a recent interview with Glamour, she says that over-indulging in water was the cause.

“I was preparing for the show, and I was drinking so much water, and I didn’t know I was low in sodium,” she tells the magazine’s writer. “I was waiting for an Uber. I get down to the bottom of the steps, and I start evidently looking weird, and [the people I was with] were like, ‘Are you okay?’” From there, Shields says that “everything went black,” she fell headfirst into a wall and started frothing at the mouth.

“The next thing I remember, I’m being loaded into an ambulance. I have oxygen on, and Bradley f**king Cooper is sitting next to me holding my hand,” she tells Glamour. Cooper had just happened to be nearby and available to be called upon for assistance when Shields’ husband was unable to get there in time. 

“I thought to myself, This is what death must be like. You wake up and Bradley Cooper’s going, ‘I’m going to go to the hospital with you, Brooke,’ and he’s holding my hand,” Shields recalls. “And I’m looking at my hand, I’m looking at Bradley Cooper’s hand in my hand, and I’m like, ‘This is odd and surreal.’”

According to Shields, her doctor’s advice was to “eat potato chips every day,” as she was desperately low on sodium at the time.