A Food Network regular “overcame death” and is ready to tell the world.

Brian Malarkey, 53, who has competed onGuy’s Grocery Games, Tournament of Championsand other Food Network series, detailed the medical episode he had while on vacation in Italy with his girlfriendDanielle Harley35. The pair discussed the recent incident during the Nov. 10 episode of their podcast,Harley Malarkey Podcast: Old Dog, New Tricks.

In retelling the story, Malarkey said they were playing tennis when he suddenly saw dark spots and thought he was going to pass out. They moved from the courts for him to lie down and he recalled thinking, “I don’t want these people to see me being a little b—-.”

“He’s gotten lightheaded before,” Harley explained. “We pinned down to Mexican ibuprofen.” After realizing that medical care would be far away, she went to the pool bar and told them to call a doctor.

Malarkey yelled at her for doing this, according to Harley, saying, “Are you f—ing serious? I just needed a f—ing minute. Don’t call the doctor.”

Malarkey recalled also saying, “I don’t want anybody. I’m embarrassed. I don’t know what’s going on.”

In that moment, he felt “ fluttery” and Marley recalled his whole body “convulsing.” “I had zero control over my body,” he said, calling it “complete chaos” and “full-blown seizures.” While he didn’t lose consciousness and wasn’t in pain, he explained that it kept getting “intense” and that he “felt scared to death.”

“And he’s like, ‘I love you.’ Like kind of like, ‘In case I don’t make it out of this, like I love you,’” Harley said.

Malarkey was unsure if he was having a stroke or a heart attack, but when he turned to his side, he “saw the white light:” “I felt the spirits saying, ‘Come on up, if you want you can come on up.’”

“I thought about my children. I thought about my work. I thought about Harley. I thought about my mom,” Malarkey explained. “I’ve completed than I could ever imagine in work and in my career and in my spiritual quest to be better.” But he then thought, “I can’t leave Harley. I can’t leave my kids. I can’t leave these things.”

All the while, Harley thought he was “actually dying” while they spent “40 minutes” waiting for medical help. When the ambulance arrived, Malarkey said he got an IV of Valium and  thought, “As soon as I know I’m going to live, I’m so mad at myself for causing myself this much stress and doing this much damage to the trip.” He also worried that the hotel guests would think he was “on drugs” or “having an OD.”

By the time he got to the hospital he remembers thinking, “ I just overcame death. I had a finger in death door right there and I was like it was pretty entertaining.”

The doctors thought it was a “panic response” and his scans and tests came back negative so they sent them home with liquid Xanax. Harley said, she “discovered with ChatGPT it was probably a non-epileptic psychogenic seizure.”