HLN’s Dr. Drew Hospitalized After Picking Up Nasty-Sounding Bug In West Indies

This is not how you rest up ahead of launching a new cable show. HLN’s newest host, Dr. Drew Pinsky, is in the final weeks before his new show launches, and he’s telling his Twitter followers he spent the night in the hospital.

“Spent the night as a patient in the hospital. Seems I may have picked up Leptospirosis in the West Indies.This is just brutal,” Dr. Drew tweeted this afternoon.

The West Indies trip–a second honeymoon for Dr. Drew and Mrs. Drew (?) after twenty years–ended with an epic journey back to the U.S., and a night in the hospital. Sounds restful, eh? Well, you haven’t heard the best of it. We must admit we’re not up on our Leptospirosis, so we typed it into the Google machine, and then we got grossed out:

Symptoms of leptospirosis include high fever, severe headache, chills, muscle aches, and vomiting, and may include jaundice (yellow skin and eyes), red eyes, abdominal pain, diarrhea, or a rash. If the disease is not treated, the patient could develop kidney damage, meningitis (inflammation of the membrane around the brain and spinal cord), liver failure, and respiratory distress. In rare cases death occurs.

Happy Anniversary! Yikes.

Without getting too graphic, you get the bug by coming into contact with contaminated water (that’s putting it nicely), and usually by doing so in tropical climates.

Dr. Drew’s new show debuts on HLN in March, and we’re hoping he’s feeling better long before that.

Here’s the tweet the doc shared today: