Mariska Hargitay is best known for her work on Law & Order: SVU, an acronym that now stands for Scary Ventilation Unit.

You see, Mariska Hargitay’s lungs have collapsed. Or, rather, one of Mariska Hargitay’s lungs has collapsed. Partially. One of Mariska Hargitay’s lungs has partially collapsed. But it’s OK – she’s getting better.

‘Mariska Hargitay’ was, of course, the greeting used in Mike Myers‘ The Love Guru, which leads us to believe that Mariska was the first victim in a Final Destination-style plot to cripple anyone involved in that awful movie. We’ll know for sure if Jessica Alba develops colorectal ulcers next week.

Mariska Hargitay is a woman of many accomplishments. According to the Guinness Book Of Records, she’s the highest-paid TV actress in the world, plus she’s fluent in five languages, was the fourth-place runner up in the 1982 Miss California USA pageant and has a name that seems as if it should be an anagram for something rude.

And now Mariska Hargitay has notched up another accomplishment – she’s the actress on Law & Order: SVU whose lung can be most easily flatpacked. This is because, somewhat horrifically, Mariska Hargitay has suffered a partially-collapsed lung, possibly after being involved in a sledding accident in the Hamptons.

The good news, however, is that Mariska Hargitay is on the mend and could be released from hospital as soon as Friday. OK! reports:

The Law & Order: SVU star is being cared for by the staff at NYU Medical Center in Manhattan, and sources tell OK! she will be there for observation while she recuperates until at least this Friday. An NBC spokesperson tells OK! that the TV star is on the mend, saying,  “Mariska is feeling better. We are looking forward to her quick recovery and return to set.”

That’s very good news, and hopefully Mariska Hargitay will make a swift and full recovery from her injury. She needs to, really, because without her doing the exact same monotonous, news-reactive, slightly sensationalist, police procedural work week in, week out on Law & Order, the show would never be able to survive.

Apparently when Mariska Hargitay does return to the Law & Order set, she’ll still be suffering from problems with her collapsed lung and will need to be under close medical supervision until she is completely better.

It sounds horrible, but at least the Law & Order production staff are sympathetic to Mariska’s needs and have rewritten the plots of her first few episodes back to make it easier to deal with – like one being set on the moon to cover for her oxygen mask and one where she inexplicably gets to weep at toboggans a lot.

Still, we wish Mariska Hargitay the best. Her injury sounds terrifying, and we’re sure we’ll hear a lot more about it in the coming weeks when she launches The Mariska Hargitay Foundation For Reckless Millionaires Who Hurt Themselves Doing Something Stupid Down The Road From Where Billy Joel Lives.

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