Selma Blair reveals how her MS was dismissed for years despite obvious warning sign
Selma Blair has candidly opened up about how her multiple sclerosis (MS) was dismissed for decades despite a very obvious warning sign.
The 53-year-old The Sweetest Thing star lived with the autoimmune condition for a staggering 40 years before she ever received a diagnosis.
The actress first revealed news of the diagnosis to her millions of Instagram followers back in 2018 and has since become one of the most well-known faces with the disability, using her platform to spread awareness and promote understanding of the condition.
"I was diagnosed with relapsing [remitting] MS in 2018. It turned out I probably had juvenile MS as my first optical neuritis was when I was about seven, which left me with a lazy eye from nerve damage. But there were a lot of things missed my whole life," Blair said at the Flow Space Women’s Health Summit, per Variety.
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Recalling all those years of suffering in pain, all the hospital stays and doctors brushing off her symptoms, she explained: "I had CAT scans as a kid, and I had doctor visits, and I stayed in hospitals for weeks at a time.
"I’d have fevers, I have pain, endless, bone-crushing fatigue that I still do have. And my mum would say, why can’t you give her an MRI?"
Sharing that she felt she experienced a medical double-standard, the A-lister continued: "And they’re like, 'Oh, she doesn’t need it. She’s probably getting her period'. But then a boy would come in from my class who had a headache and they gave him an MRI the first thing.
"Now, they’re not wrong for doing that for him, but it’s like, What? Because I appeared OK, even though I had headaches all the time."
Blair's diagnosis
The eventual diagnosis was able to explain Blair's years of symptoms which were often dismissed by doctors as mere 'growing pains'.
It was only after sharing her experience publicly on social media that she was finally able to get the ball rolling.
"So, I am in pretty intense pain," Blair posted on Instagram at the time in 2018. "Whiplash a few times on my horse and sitting on planes … and now I am in a real musculoskeletal bind.
"Hanging in though. Hoping I can rehab it and get back to riding and writing again soon. #chronicpain is a real challenge. Love to all of us."
Her friend, fellow actress Elizabeth Berkley, reached out asking if Blair was 'OK' before she revealed her list of symptoms.
"You need to see my brother right away," Berkley told her. "He’s a spinal neurologist. Maybe he can help. I’ll call him now. Stand by."
Following their chat, Blair met with Jason Berkley’s office in Beverly Hills where he performed one simple test, which was monumental in the actress finally receiving a diagnosis.
"He performed the Romberg’s test, a simple examination where you put your feet together and close your eyes," Blair recalled in a personal essay written for The Guardian in 2022.
"My legs gave out beneath me. I fell backward, dropping like a plank on to the exam room floor. He ordered an MRI on the spot."
'It all made so much sense now'
Explaining the test, Blair wrote: "With my eyes shut, I had no sense of where I was, but gravity did. And then, finally, answers.
"The scan was my new fortune-teller. The only one I needed."
It had revealed 'a number of midsized MS-related lesions' on her brain, six of which were problematic because they were active, which Blair described as 'little fires burning from canyon to canyon on the synapses'.
"The connection between my brain and my body demyelinated," she continued. "It all made so much sense now."
Blair said she felt 'an adrenaline rush of emotion' akin to 'giving birth' after Dr Berkley told her: "You have MS."
"The release of it. The catharsis of it. But more than anything, I was overwhelmed by a sense of relief, like the way you feel when an ocean wave breaks right at the shore before taking you under," she poetically wrote.
No wonder finally getting a diagnosis was so emotional, given that 'for years', Blair's symptoms were dismissed as 'anxiety', 'emotional', 'all in her head' and 'psychosomatic'.
"For years I’d known they were wrong," she carried on. "And now I had a map to follow. I had information. A label. This time, one that fit."
Blair candidly resolved: "There are words that explain what is wrong with me. It’s not my fault.
"At least … I hope it’s not my fault. I can work with this. I can learn how to cope with this. It can’t get any worse than this. Or it can.
"I will teach myself how to be OK."
'There was so much I needed to learn'
During the Flow Space Women’s Health Summit last week (9 October), Blair opened up about how sharing her experience publicly became a source of comfort and connection for many living with chronic illness.
"I just put it on my Instagram to thank people on a set who were helping me stay at my job, because I couldn’t use my hands well, I couldn’t take my clothes off. I still sometimes struggle with dystonia and with speech and movement, even though I’m relapse-free right now," she shared.
"But when I did post, I saw that there was a whole world that was that felt seen or a part of being seen or could relate to someone having chronic health issues. I realised that was a comfort to a lot of people. And there weren’t a lot of resources out about MS at the time. There was so much I needed to learn. I’m still learning as I live with it, but I did see that it was much bigger than me … It felt good. It felt good knowing people were feeling some comfort."
Topics: Celebrity, Health, Women's Health
Rhiannon Ingle