‘MY BATTLE WITH MS’ Selma Blair
reveals the diagnosis that changed her life
After years of trying to manage unexplained symptoms – including extreme neck pain, intermittent vertigo, loss of muscle control, debilitating tiredness, anxiety and depression – Hollywood actress Selma Blair finally found a doctor who would listen to her.
In October last year, the star had an MRI scan and a shocking diagnosis was pronounced: Blair had been suffering from multiple sclerosis, an incurable autoimmune disease that interferes with the central nervous system’s ability to communicate with the rest of the body.
The revelation would have left most people reeling. But, as the 46-year-old star of Cruel Intentions and Legally Blonde recently told Good Morning America, it was with a sense of relief that she received the news. “I cried. I had tears,” she said. “They weren’t tears of panic, they were tears of knowing I now had to give in to a body that had loss of control, and there was some relief in that.”
She felt relief, she explained, in knowing that her debilitating symptoms had a very real – and very serious – cause. “Ever since my son [Arthur] was born [in 2011], I was in an MS flare-up and didn’t know, and I was giving it everything to seem normal,” Blair said. “And I was self-medicating when he wasn’t with
me. I was drinking. I was in pain. I wasn’t always drinking, but there were times when I couldn’t take it. I was really struggling with, ‘How am I going to get by in life?’ ”
Before she was diagnosed, the single mother, who says she was so exhausted she would sometimes have to pull over to the side of the road for a nap after dropping off her son at school, revealed she reached out to fellow Hollywood alum Michael J. Fox, who revealed he had Parkinson’s disease in 1998. She says he was a great source of support and she realised how important it was to spread the word about the disease and raise awareness of what life is like living with a disability.
“I’m pretty much a nobody in Hollywood,” she recently told Vanity Fair. “But when I read comments on Instagram from people who were suffering, whether it was from MS, or anything, I thought, ‘Holy sh*t, there’s a need for honesty about being disabled from someone recognisable.’ ”
Fast-forward to her Oscars red-carpet appearance. Dressed in a stunning, ethereal Ralph & Russo gown, and sporting her custom-made leather bejewelled cane, Blair wowed the assembled crowd with her assured, confident entrance.
Her friends, including former co-star Sarah Michelle Gellar, are in awe of her courage. “There’s a calmness to her because I think now she knows she can’t do everything, and it’s OK,” Gellar told Vanity Fair. “It’s been wonderful to watch her be more settled, more content, and almost more in control of herself in a weird way.”