Selling Sunset’s Amanza Smith reveals she was ‘two days’ from DYING after diagnosis with a spinal infection that left her hospitalized for a month: ‘The doctors and my friend saved my life’

Sunset star Amanza Smith has shared shocking details about how close to death she was battling a recent spine infection.

The 46-year-old real estate agent spoke of her struggle with the potentially deadly infection osteomyelitis, which led her to spend a month in hospital after being discovered in May for a talk with People.

She shared how she first noticed something was wrong when she developed excruciating back pain that didn’t subside for nearly a month, until the pain became so severe that she collapsed one night in her Los Angeles home.

After a visit to the hospital, her doctor told her, “One or two more days at home and you could have been dead.”

“I thought I had back pain, and I almost died,” Amanza said. “The doctors and my friend saved my life.”

Even after falling at home, Smith waited five days before being taken to the hospital by a close friend on June 2.

When she arrived, she underwent an MRI, which revealed she suffered from vertebral osteomyelitis. According to the American Association of Neurological SurgeonsThe condition is an infection of the spine and adjacent tissues.

About one in five people who suffer from the condition will die, according to figures The Cleveland Clinicalthough diagnosis and treatment have improved in recent years.

Unfortunately, Amanza’s chances weren’t great, as the condition was already advanced by the time the doctors discovered it.

She was put on an antibiotic regiment and underwent surgery on her lower back to “remove the infection from the bones,” but the infection was more advanced than doctors realized. Smith said it had spread from the back of her spine to the front, which was harder to reach and more dangerous to operate on.

“It was close to my aorta and my kidney,” Amanza said, explaining doctors’ initial reluctance to operate there.

However, their hopes that the antibiotics could kick the rest were dashed as her vertebrae continued to deteriorate.

“The risk was that the antibiotics wouldn’t penetrate the bone and my entire back could collapse,” she said.

To prevent further deterioration, doctors performed a six-hour surgery session in which she was fitted with a titanium mesh cage near her spine, along with metal rods and screws to hold the bones in place.

Smith felt brighter now that she was out of the woods, and joked that she was now “an iron woman, with rods and screws.”

Although she was admitted on June 5 this year, she was finally discharged almost a month later on July 3.

Still, her treatments are far from over. She’s still on an antibiotic regimen for nearly five months that she’ll have to stick to, and she’ll have to keep her efforts to a minimum and do physical therapy sessions to help her regain her normal strength and mobility.

“There are so many things I can’t do because I can’t lift more than five pounds,” Smith admitted, noting that even her “bag is too heavy” to carry safely when it gets too full.

While she was grateful to be alive and on the road to recovery, she was also still impatient to get back to living as she knew it.

“You can’t speed up time, but I really want to be able to do the things I love to do,” said Amanza. ‘I like to decorate. I like rearranging. I want to be able to hang things, but I’m very limited at the moment.’

But she added that her battle with osteomyelitis had given her a fresh perspective on friendship and life.

“You know who your friends are when you become a burden,” she said. “It’s like being born again. I will never take my mobility for granted again. When I can walk and jog and do Pilates or ballet again, I hope I can stick to that, because I plan to live to be 107.”

Amanza seems to be making up for her pans to be able to live a full life again.

Earlier this month, she revealed she was dating a new guy and made the relationship Instagram Official with an adorable video of the two kissing, though she didn’t mention his name.

The new romance follows her divorce in December 2022 from Dutch footballer Ryan Babel, with whom she was together for three years.

Prior to that, she was married to former NFL player Ralph Brown from 2010–2012, with whom she shares her 13-year-old daughter Noah and 11-year-old son Braker.

According to Smith, her ex-husband was a devoted father for years after their divorce, even though he was no longer able to pay child support after only a year and a half. Not skinny but not fat podcast that he quickly “blows his money” after retiring from the NFL.

His last contact with him was reportedly in 2019, when he sent her an email, days after dropping their kids off at school, in which she claimed he wrote, “My situation is not good at the moment. I can’t take care of the kids financially. It’s not safe for them to be with me. You must keep them until my situation changes.’

Smith has claimed that even Brown’s relatives would not share his whereabouts with her, and they allegedly blocked her after her attempts to contact them.

However, despite the unusual circumstances, the police do not consider him missing as there are no indications of foul play in his disappearance and he has sent her an email stating that he would be out of reach.

A change of address request to the court overseeing the couple’s custody and child support arrangement also revealed that he was alive.

Speaking to Entertainment Tonight in August 2020, Smith said she had considered the possibility that Brown may have been suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a worsening brain condition that can result from repeated head trauma and concussion. It has affected several other NFL players and has been implicated in several player suicides.

However, there is no hard evidence that Brown suffered from the condition.