Photo: Getty Images
Earlier this year, Selena Gomez's mom, Mandy Teefey, survived a near-fatal battle with double pneumonia and the star couldn't be more proud of her for sharing her story.
Speaking with PEOPLE, Teefey, 45, recalled the struggle in shooting the December cover of Entrepreneur magazine with her superstar daughter and Newsette founder Daniella Pierson in support of their new mental health company, Wondermind. "I almost passed out doing the shoot," she admitted. "We had to break so many times, but all my friends and loved ones around me helped me get through it. I was smiling and laughing most of the time because I was going to faint. Don't judge how someone looks because you don't know what's underneath that picture."
Weeks before the shoot, Teefey had entered a hospital because she had been "exacerbated" when she caught COVID-19. "I got pneumonia in February in New York, and I guess the doctor didn't really clear it up as much as it needed to be," she explained. "I had gotten IV vitamin therapy, which I think helped me get through the times I did."
"Then a week before I was going to get my first COVID shot, I got COVID," Teefey continued. "I was at home the whole time. When my fever broke, my oxygen went to 69, and I was rushed to the hospital. The first hospital was pretty badgering, like, 'Why didn't you get your shot?' I'm like, 'I literally can't breathe right now. Can we talk about this later? I will explain why.' They said that had my body not responded as quickly as it did, I had two days [to live].”
Thankfully, Teefey pushed through and ended up doing the shoot shortly afterward. When the cover was revealed, she was criticized for her weight gain, so she shared the backstory via Instagram. "I did not expect it to get picked up at all by anybody because I'm like, 'Nobody cares about my Instagram.' I was like, 'Oh my gosh, I'm embarrassed. It's scrolling on CNN.' It's really hard for me to have that kind of attention. But Selena was like, 'No mom, I'm proud of you.'"