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Billy Porter<\/a> says a poorly treated urinary infection nearly killed him.<\/p>\n On Wednesday, the 56-year-old Broadway icon appeared on \u201cToday<\/a>\u201d to promote his new children\u2019s book, \u201cSongbird in the Light,\u201d and discussed a recent health scare that\u2019s given the actor a new outlook on life.<\/p>\n \u201cI am on the road to complete recovery,\u201d he said, tearing up. \u201cIt is a gift to be alive. It\u2019s still emotional to talk about it.\u201d<\/p>\n Last year, Porter crossed the pond and made his West End debut starring as the Emcee in the musical \u201cCabaret<\/a>,\u201d which ran Jan. 28 through May 24 at London\u2019s Playhouse Theatre. The Tony-winning actor<\/a> said he was having a ball and living his purpose, but then he got a urinary infection.<\/p>\n \u201cThe medicine in the U.K. is trash,\u201d he told \u201cOutlaws<\/a>\u201d podcast host TS Madison earlier this month. \u201cFour rounds of antibiotics and 10 to 12 weeks later, it\u2019s a kidney infection with kidney stones.\u201d<\/p>\n Porter eventually thought the infection had cleared up and returned to New York, where last fall he was gearing up for a Broadway revival of the musical starring as the production\u2019s first Black Emcee, but his history-making run was cut short.<\/p>\n \u201cI go into rehearsals for \u2018Cabaret\u2019 on Broadway … and everything seems fine, and a month in, the kidney stone pain comes back,\u201d he told Madison.<\/p>\n On a Tuesday in September, Porter checked himself into the hospital due to debilitating pain, and then the \u201cPose\u201d star subsequently fell into a coma and woke up days later on a Saturday evening.<\/p>\n \u201cThey went in to do a routine check. They saw that the kidney stone was trapped in my urethra, and they went in to put a stent in, redirect the urine, blast me with real antibiotics \u2014 not U.K. antibiotics \u2014 and blow up the kidney stones. When they got in there, there was so much pus and bile and infection behind the stone, it bubbled up and I went uroseptic in minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI was dead for three days,\u201d Porter said.<\/p>\n Porter said he was placed on an ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) machine, which, according to Mayo Clinic<\/a>, pumps blood outside of the body to a heart-lung machine, removes carbon dioxide from the blood and sends oxygen-rich blood back to the body. It\u2019s essentially a life-support system.<\/p>\n