Bachelor contestant Beverly Ortega is opening up about her sudden exit from the show.
Fans were left wondering what happened when Ortega, a 30-year-old insurance salesperson from Howard Beach, New York, left the show without explanation during the Feb. 10 episode before getting to go on a romantic one-on-one date with Bachelor Grant Ellis.
In the Feb. 11 episode of the Bachelor Happy Hour podcast, Ortega revealed she was diagnosed with appendicitis and had to undergo emergency surgery to get her appendix removed.
According to the National Institute of Health, appendicitis is a condition where one’s appendix gets inflamed. The typical treatment is surgery to remove the inflamed organ.
Ortega said on the podcast that she woke up from a nap with her stomach hurting, revealing that she experienced “excruciating pain” and continued to throw up for 12 hours.
“I was like, ‘I know my body. I’m listening to my body. Something is not OK,'” she recalled.
Ortega said she didn’t think it was “anything serious” beyond just “really bad stomach pain” or potentially food poisoning but that she was eventually taken to the hospital.
It wasn’t safe for Ortega to fly home to have the surgery so she had it in California, where The Bachelor is filmed, and her mother flew out to take her home after she was cleared to travel.
Despite being physically OK after the surgery, Ortega said it took her “a month and a half to recover emotionally” from what could have been between her and Ellis.
“I left with, like, the ‘what-if,'” she said. “Obviously we were building a connection. He saw and felt exactly what I was seeing and feeling. And I know they didn’t show a lot of our moments, but we did have a lot of cute little moments.”
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