Selma Blair has shared more details about her struggles with multiple sclerosis, including her emotional reaction to her diagnosis.
Blair opened up about her struggles with MS in an interview with Robin Roberts on Tuesday (February 26, 2019) on Good Morning America.
It aired just two days after she rocked a custom cane during her triumphant return to the red carpet at the Vanity Fair Oscar party (pictures can be seen below).
.@ABC NEWS EXCLUSIVE: @SelmaBlair speaks with @RobinRoberts about her MS diagnosis, “I was giving it everything to seem normal.” https://t.co/W1vUNMab63 pic.twitter.com/i17QbcHtRD
— Good Morning America (@GMA) February 26, 2019
The actress told Roberts that she was in the midst of a flare-up, and was experiencing spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological disorder which affected her voice.
“I am doing very well,” said Blair, 46. “I am very happy to see you. Being able to just put out what being in the middle of an aggressive form of multiple sclerosis is like. So my speech, I have spasmodic dysphonia right now. … It is interesting to be here to say this is what my particular case looks like right now.”
“I was a little scared of talking,” the actress said.
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The medical diagnosis that left her in tears, but not the kind of tears you might think.
“They weren’t tears of panic they were tears of knowing I now had to give into a body that lost control. And there was some relief in that,” Blair, who diagnosed with multiple sclerosis said.
There were symptoms of illness long before the 46-year-old found out what she was fighting last year. Signs that her seven-year-old son Arthur had been seeing first hand.
“He had already seen that I was falling and doing things… I did have to tell him after the MRI. I said I have something called multiple sclerosis and he almost cried and said ‘will it kill you?’ And I said ‘no, we never know what kills us Arthur, but this is not the doctor telling me I’m dying.’”
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It turns out the actress was in a full MS flare up since her son was born, but didn’t know.
“I was giving it everything to seem normal, and I was self-medicating when he wasn’t with me. Drinking, in pain… Not always drinking, but there were times when I couldn’t take it and I was really struggling,” Blair confessed.
Feeling helpless when her doctors didn’t take her seriously.
“Single mother, you’re exhausted… I’d even drop my son off at school a mile away and before I got home I’d have to pull over and take a nap. I was ashamed and I was doing the best I could but it was killing me.”
Selma found comfort asking for help from fellow actor Michael J. Fox, who has lived with Parkinson’s disease for three decades.
“Really, he gives me hope.”
