Erick Erickson's conservative voice silenced temporarily by serious illness

Ordinarily, conservative columnist Erick Erickson would be clamoring about the latest developments in the Trump-Cruz-Kasich battle for the Republican presidential nomination.

The political pundit, based in Macon, has been uncharacteristically quiet since Thursday.

In a posting Sunday night on his website, The Resurgent, Erickson divulged that he has been hospitalized since late last week after doctors discovered multiple blood clots in his lungs.

The former Macon city councilman, now a well-known commentator on national television and a weeknight host of WSB radio's Atlanta's Evening News, said in the post that his health had been deteriorating in recent weeks.

Thinking he was battling bronchitis, Erickson continued his rigorous schedule and flew to Connecticut last week to speak to the UCONN College Republicans.

After stopping to catch his breath on the way back to the hotel, he "knew more and more something was wrong," he wrote.

Erickson said his blood oxygen level "cratered to the point of numb lips and the act of putting shampoo in my hair was leaving me out of breath."

As he recovers, Erickson said his wife and assistant are shielding him from email and the Internet, a fact he typed in his hospital room on his tablet keyboard.

"It is rather sobering to have doctors tell you that you should be dead," he wrote.

Last month, Erickson told The Telegraph he had hired bodyguards to protect him after getting death threats over his anti-Donald Trump stance.

In his last website post titled "Trying not to Die," Erickson said he has been moved from the cardiovascular ICU to a private room.

He ended the posting with this message: "Ecclesiastes says there is a time to heal and a time to be silent. My time for both has come. I am healing slowly. My breath has returned. My blood-oxygen level is back into the high nineties. But I need a few more days before I again engage with the world. I appreciate your thoughts and prayers."

He closed by stating other writers at The Resurgent would be "picking up the slack left by my absence."

To contact writer Liz Fabian, call 744-4303 and follow her on Twitter@liz_lines.

This story was originally published April 18, 2016 at 6:25 PM with the headline "Erick Erickson's conservative voice silenced temporarily by serious illness ."