The Real Housewives of Rhode Island‘s Rulla Nehme Pontarelli revealed new details about the health scare that caused her to miss the cast trip to a Newport mansion in Episode 7.
“I swear to God it was honestly, like, bad energy, bad karma coming toward me,” Rulla said on The Real Housewives of Rhode Island After Show. “I ended up being rushed to the ER. I was in and out of Miriam Hospital for 14 days. They did every single test down to… They wanted to do a spinal tap. It was that bad.”
A bit later, Rulla added, “I was very sick. I was, like, on-my-deathbed sick. I think that the way the summer had gone, and there were some things that just, um, had snowballed. Like, I completely crashed.”
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Not only did Rulla have to go to the hospital, but she shared that she was actually transported there by ambulance — twice.
Rulla Nehme Pontarelli responds to her RHORI castmate’s skepticism about her illness
Elsewhere on the RHORI After Show, Rulla was the first to admit that she had mixed feelings about going on the cast getaway, especially so soon after Jo-Ellen Tiberi dropped another bombshell about her husband, Brian Pontarelli, and his alleged mistress during the group’s polo outing.
“I had been, like, packing my things and, again, a little like, ‘Ugh, like, do I want to be cooped up overnight?'” Rulla recalled. “But I’m going. I’m gonna go. I’m gonna hang with whoever I want to hang with and stay away from whoever I should be staying away with and just have fun.”
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That’s why she said it “pissed [her] off” that some of the ladies questioned the validity of her reason for not being there.
“If I wanted to not show up to the girls’ trip, I have no shame, I would straight-up say, like, ‘I’m all good. I’m not coming. Like, I don’t want to be around you. I don’t feel like doing this. I don’t want to be there.'” Rulla elaborated. “I’m a big girl. … Let the record show, I was not avoiding Jo-Ellen or anyone else. I was literally on my deathbed.”
What’s more, Rulla insisted that she had records to back up her version of events. She further declared, “I don’t give a s–t what anybody thinks or says, especially this particular group, you know, whoever was talking.”
How Rulla Nehme Pontarelli described her health symptoms and diagnosis on RHORI
Prior to filming the After Show, Rulla had also offered intel on her health scare during RHORI‘s May 10 episode.
“The day before the girls’ trip, I started to feel like I was coming down with something,” she recounted in a producer interview. “I wasn’t feeling myself. My head was absolutely pounding. I couldn’t speak. I had a fever spike and couldn’t even pick my head up. I [was] having trouble, like, looking at light. I couldn’t even get up to walk. I ended up in the emergency room and had to be taken by rescue. … Legitimately so sick I could die. I could.”
As Rulla’s husband, Brian, who is a podiatrist, pointed out, the doctors couldn’t figure out exactly what was wrong with her, however. Rulla, for her part, described having to undergo a whole battery of tests, including a CAT scan, MRI, and blood work, but still received no definitive diagnosis.
“Everything was coming back, you know, negative,” she shared in a confessional. “So, they thought maybe I had one of the viruses they can’t pinpoint and categorize.”
When Brian asked if she was “bummed about not going on the trip,” Rulla told him that she felt that she was “just better off” at home with her family.
As she continues her recovery on RHORI, find out how Rulla explained another recent health emergency in her and Brian’s family.
