Gabourey Sidibe Announces She Is Getting Her Tonsils Removed: 'I Deserve to Take All of 2018 Off'

Gabourey Sidibe said on Twitter Saturday that she would by taking 2018 off as "personal time" to recovers from having a tonsillectomy

Photo: Paul Zimmerman/Getty

Gabourey Sidibe is clearing her calendar for the year.

The 34-year-old Empire star announced on Twitter Saturday that she would by taking 2018 off as “personal time” to recovers from having her tonsils removed.

“I’ve decided to get a tonsillectomy and I deserve to take all of 2018 off as personal time to rest from this huge adult decision I just made,” Sidibe wrote. “Please respect my privacy at this time.”

While the comment about taking the year off could have very well have been a joke, Sidibe’s followers didn’t seem to catch on, with most of them wishing her a speedy recovery.

Reps for Sidibe did not immediately responded to PEOPLE’s request for comment.

Sidibe, who was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her performance in 2009’s Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, has been recurring on Fox’s Empire since the Lee Daniels and Danny Strong series debuted in January 2015.

She plays Becky Williams on the show, who began as an executive assistant to Terrence Howard’s Lucious Lyon before moving up to Head of A&R at the Empire label.

By December’s season 4 fall finale, it appeared Becky had another challenge heading her way: a surprise pregnancy.

RELATED: Gabourey Sidibe Opens Up About Weight-Loss Surgery For The First Time: ‘I Love My Body Now’

Her tonsillectomy aside, Sidibe isn’t a stranger to surgery. In 2016, she underwent weight loss surgery, telling PEOPLE in March that losing weight helped her find confidence.

“I think I saw my body as being outside of myself; it was like an enemy, beside me not in me. And now I’ve won,” she said. “I wish I hadn’t wasted so much time being mad at it. Because if I’d started treating it better sooner, I wouldn’t have spent so many years hating myself, I wouldn’t have allowed that negative energy to be around me. Life is really, truly all about choices and decisions. I wish I’d made the choice to love my body sooner. But I finally have.”

The only thing she doesn’t want now is to be congratulated for losing weight.

“It just annoys me because I’m just like, don’t congratulate me on that,” she told Refinery29 in June. “If you’re going to congratulate me on my weight loss, also congratulate me every time I pee. Congratulate me every time I’m burping. Because my body actually has nothing to do with you, and I don’t really need your support for it.”

“My body will always be my body and always had been, and you have nothing to do with it and you’re kind of a stranger,” she added. “But the way it works is that this is just my body. In the same way that this is just my face, this is just mine.”