The former reality star also sends a message to his estranged kids after battling COVID-19.
Jon Gosselin is opening up about his recent COVID-19 battle. The 43-year-old former reality star revealed during a sneak peek of Thursday's The Dr. Oz Show that he was hospitalized and was close to being put on a ventilator. He shared that he had a 104.8 temperature and that his girlfriend Colleen Conrad's daughter took him to the hospital.
"I was in a wheelchair. I had to wait in the ER," Gosselin -- who is now recovering at home -- told Dr. Mehmet Oz. "It was packed, like the hospital was full, and then they put me on a gurney and put me in the hallway in the waiting room, so I could get a temporary room, and then once they evaluated me and once they drew my blood and did all my blood work, all of a sudden I'm getting antibiotics, steroids and a plasma antibody transfusion for COVID. It happened really fast."
In another clip, shared by People, the former Jon & Kate Plus 8 star added that he had "a really bad COVID pneumonia based upon my numbers."
"Now, what's interesting is I didn't feel it. I didn't feel sick and I didn't feel pain…But when you went to move or do anything and you felt so weak and you wanted to pass out, it was really scary," he detailed. "If my urinals were full, I had to stand up and use the bathroom, I would fear it because I'm like, 'Oh my God, I'm going to pass out. I can't breathe.'"
"I called the nurse and I felt guilty calling the nurse all the time. Like, 'Can you just help me get this? Can you help me do that?' Everything, you feel like an invalid," Gosselin continued, adding, "You go from perfectly healthy one week, to you can't do anything the next week. It was so weird."
During their interview, Dr. Oz asked Gosselin what his COVID-19 battle taught him and if he had a message for his estranged children. The reality star is father to twin daughters Cara and Madelyn, 19, and sextuplets Alexis, Aaden, Joel, Leah, Hannah and Collin, 16. He currently has custody of Hannah and Collin. Gosselin and ex-wife Kate Gosselin divorced in 2009.
"Just tell them I love them and I'm just thinking of the future more. I hope they develop a relationship with Hannah and Collin," he said about what he wished he could tell his other children. "I hope that one day I can be part of your life. I'm glad that I got a second chance."
"I was more concerned about myself in the hospital and getting better and getting back to my family. I miss them," he continued. "That's another surreal part of my life that I have developed a thick skin around to move forward to just help Hannah and Collin right now since they live with me. Those are things that I want to build towards."
Back in May, Gosselin told ET that he had been working as an IT director at a healthcare facility amid the coronavirus pandemic.
"We see the undocumented and uninsured. We're doing telemedicine and telephonic, and we're using Ring Sensual for Zoom to see patients. So we're not physically seeing patients right now," he told ET's Kevin Frazier. "My job was to set up and teach providers, which are doctors, on how to use telemedicine. So I developed a procedure rather quickly and my boss, the CIO, bought software that we never used before. I had to learn it in five, six hours."
He added that he then had to create a whole procedure, and "teach doctors who have been seeing patients for 30 years in person how to see patients online."
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