Selma Blair Opens Up About Battle With Multiple Sclerosis

Selma Blair has opened up about her struggles with multiple sclerosis after declaring her diagnosis last October. In an interview with Vanity Fair, the “Legally Blonde” star said she’s been dealing with a host of odd ailments for almost five decades, before undergoing an MRI last summer and discovering the autoimmune disorder.

Selma Blair Opens Up About Battle With Multiple Sclerosis

“I’m pretty much a nobody in Hollywood,” she said. “But once I read opinions on Instagram from people who were affected, whether it had been from M.S. or something, I thought, ‘Holy s–, there’s a demand for honesty about being disabled from someone recognizable.'” Blair told”Good Morning America” that, prior to her diagnosis, she had begun to experience intense pain and exhaustion since giving birth to her son in 2011. The exhaustion was often overwhelming, she said, remembering times when she would push a mile to drop her son off at school simply to pull over and have a rest before she moved home.

“I was in an M.S. flare-up and did not know, and I was giving it all to seem normal,” Blair said. “And I was self-medicating when he was not with me. I was drinking. I had been in pain. I was not consistently drinking, but there were instances when I could not take it” She once called up fellow actor Michael J. Fox, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1991 since she grew so desperate that she believed she might have the identical disease. However, things changed once she obtained her identification.

“I had tears. They were not tears of panic,” Blair said about the moment she was diagnosed. “They were tears of understanding I now had to devote to a body that had loss of hands, and there was some relief from that.” Today Blair wears her diagnosis proudly. Last Sunday, she attended the Vanity Fair Oscar after-party using a bedazzled cane she told Vanity Fair they must always “fit right and look cool” — she promises to maintain acting despite her disability.

Several friends and family members have also spoken out in support of Blair, including “Cruel Intentions” co-star and longtime pal Sarah Michelle Gellar. “There’s a calmness to her because I believe she knows she can’t do everything, and it’s O.K., a few times if she can’t,” Gellar told Vanity Fair. “It has been fantastic to see her be more settled, more articles, and more in charge of herself in a weird way.”

“She actually is sharing something so vulnerable, and so scary,” Jenner said. “She showed me what courage is, and how to be brave. I changed a bit of the way I live my life because of her.” As for the long run, Blair remains hopeful, starting a monthly intravenous-drug therapy around the same time that the Vanity Fair interview took place.

“I am very optimistic; I think she’ll be another person in a calendar year,” doctor Saud Sadiq said. “I’ve patients with M.S. that are surgeons, actors, a commercial airline pilot, sports figures, effective lawyers — they do not want anyone to know about their illness because they feel it may hurt their career. Her choice to speak out also brings awareness and raises research funds for the disease when people are able to see somebody affected in the manner that she’s.”