Billy Porter has revealed he was ‘dead for three days’ amid his battle with sepsis, and considers it a miracle that he is even alive.
The winner of multiple Tony awards went into detail about his health ordeal on Monday’s episode of the Outlaws with TS Madison podcast.
Porter, 56, who was forced to quit his starring role as the Emcee in Broadway’s revival of Cabaret due to his medical woes last September, explained he went into hospital for what he thought would be a routine procedure to remove a kidney stone from his urethra.
But doctors found a serious infection behind the stone that rapidly spread and became urosepsis.
‘When they got in there, there was so much puss and bile and infection behind the stone. It bubbled up, and I went uroseptic in minutes,’ remembered Porter, who recently praised Prince William for his kindness.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, sepsis is a life-threatening reaction to an infection that causes the immune system to harm healthy tissues and organs. Urosepsis is a type of sepsis that begins in the urinary tract and happens when a urinary tract infection goes untreated and spreads to the kidneys.
Billy Porter has revealed he was ‘dead for three days’ amid his battle with sepsis last September, and considers it a miracle that he’s even alive (pictured on January 30)
The winner of multiple Tony awards (pictured giving fans a health update on Instagram in December) went into more detail about his ordeal on Monday’s episode of the Outlaws with TS Madison podcast
Porter’s condition was so severe that doctors hooked him up on an ECMO machine and placed him into a coma for several days.
According to the National Health Service (NHS), the machine ‘will pump blood from a large vein through an artificial lung (the membrane) outside of your body,’ so that the ‘artificial lung adds oxygen to the blood and removes waste carbon dioxide.’
And ‘blood is then returned’ to an individual’s body ‘through another large vein’ near the heart.
‘I was on the ECMO machine. I was dead for three days,’ Porter said, adding, ‘I am a miracle. I’m a walking miracle.’
After the two-time Emmy winner woke up and was taken off life support, doctors told Porter that his legs ‘had gone into compartment syndrome, which is when the muscles close in on themselves and cut off the oxygen.’
‘So they had to cut me open on either side of my leg while I was in a coma, and from my knee to my hip, and leave it open for two days so they could save my leg,’ Porter recalled.
The star made a full recovery and feels ‘so grateful to be here. It is such a gift,’ he said.
The singer’s illness has changed his whole outlook on life.
The 56-year-old star was forced to quit his starring role as the Emcee in Broadway’s revival of Cabaret due to his medical woes
Porter made a full recovery and said feels ‘so grateful to be here. It is such a gift’ (pictured on the Lorraine TV show in London in April 2025)
The singer’s illness has changed his whole outlook on life (pictured in April 2025)
‘As I sat in my hospital bed, reflecting, there were a couple of things I heard,’ Porter described. ‘The first thing I heard was, work smarter, not harder. The second thing I heard was, be obedient and answer the call. And the third thing I heard was, don’t you ever stop telling the truth again.
‘I unconsciously silenced myself for fear that I wouldn’t be on the A-list anymore.’
In 2021, Porter revealed he has been living with HIV since 2007.
‘I was the generation that was supposed to know better, and it happened anyway. It was 2007, the worst year of my life,’ he said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. ‘By February, I had been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. By March, I signed bankruptcy papers. And by June, I was diagnosed HIV-positive.’
After years of hiding his condition, the performer, who also starred in the hit TV series Pose, explained speaking ‘the truth’ was ‘healing.’