Pauley Perrette: I suffered 'massive stroke' in 2021
Former "NCIS" star Pauley Perrette revealed on social media Friday that she suffered "a massive stroke" in 2021. Credit: Getty Images for Project Angel Food / Phillip Faraone
Pauley Perrette, who as free-spirited forensic scientist Abby Sciuto for 15 years on "NCIS" became one of TV's best-liked and highest-paid actors before leaving the show in 2018, revealed Friday that a year ago she had suffered what she called "a massive stoke."
"Hey, guys. Oh, my God, it's Sept 2. It's the one-year anniversary since I had a stroke. And I'm still here," Perrette, 53, said in a Twitter video, alongside a prose message reading, "It's 9/2. One year ago I had a massive stoke."
"Yes, I'm still here, again," the actor continued in her minute-and-a-quarter video. "Like, how many times do I cheat death? Like, I almost died from a hair-dye allergy" in 2014 that sent her to a Los Angeles emergency room. "I have food allergies. I am a domestic-violence and a rape survivor," she said, referring to, respectively, ex-husband Francis Shivers, who served time in 2012 for violating a restraining order issued for what a court called his "stalking" of Perrette; and her account in 2017 of having been raped in high school.
"And I was assaulted by [a] crazy homeless person and almost died and I'm still here," she added. In November 2015, an evidently mentally ill transient man, David Merck, was arrested after allegedly punching and threatening to kill Perrette in the street outside her home. A court deemed him incompetent to stand trial, and in October 2016 he was ordered to remain in psychiatric treatment and confinement. He was released in February 2018.
"Actually, I'm really grateful," Perrette went on, "and especially for all my rescue dogs that are right over there. And I'm here. I'm still here. I feel good. Been through a lot in the last two years — things that are harder than having a stroke. But I'm still here. And I'm still grateful. And thank you, those of you who are my friends. Thank you. God bless you all. I'm still here."
In the prose portion of her tweet, Perrette wrote that she has "lost so many beloved family and friends. And daddy. And then Cousin Wayne." Her father, Paul Perrette, died in January 2021 of COVID-19. "There were no vaccines then," she tweeted on the anniversary of his death. "Just exhausted health care workers, dead bodies all over. And me saying goodbye on a nurse's cell phone."
Her firefighter cousin, Wayne Buckles, with whom she was close, died unexpectedly at his Elizabethton, Tennessee, home in March at age 54.
