Four months after going public about her struggles with multiple sclerosis, the 'Cruel Intentions' actress gives her first interview about her health condition to 'Good Morning America'.
- Feb 27, 2019
AceShowbiz - Actress Selma Blair turned to alcohol to help her cope with her ailing health, years before she was finally diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS).
The "Cruel Intentions" star went public with her personal struggles in October (18), two months after doctors told her the central nervous system disease was to blame for her extreme fatigue, loss of balance, and lack of coordination.
The aggressive form of MS Selma has developed has since also left her with spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological disorder which affects the voice muscles, but that didn't stop the 46-year-old from giving her first TV interview about her health to U.S. breakfast show "Good Morning America", despite confessing she was a little "scared".
Days before making her return to the red carpet at the Vanity Fair Oscars Party on Sunday, February 24, the actress opened up about her medical crisis, and admitted that finally being able to put a label on her illness brought her a measure of relief, because she had been complaining about symptoms since welcoming her son Arthur in 2011.
"I cried, I had tears," Selma recalled of her initial reaction to the diagnosis. "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, 'cause ever since my son was born, I was in an MS flare-up and didn't know, and I was giving it everything to seem normal."
The stress of her situation drove her to drown her sorrows in booze whenever Arthur, her child with ex-boyfriend Jason Bleick, wasn't around.
"I was self-medicating when he wasn't with me," Selma explained to newswoman Robin Roberts (II). "I was drinking, I was in pain. I wasn't always drinking, but there were times when I couldn't take it. And I was really struggling with, 'How am I going to get by in life?' "
The pressure of keeping up appearances while also being a "great mother" left her exhausted, and she confesses, "It was killing me."
Selma eventually decided to reach out to fellow actor Michael J. Fox, who has continued to work despite battling neurodegenerative disorder Parkinson's since 1991, and the 57-year-old "Back to the Future" star's words of support and comfort helped to give her "hope."
She also had to sit down with her son to explain her diagnosis, after previously choosing to deal with her symptoms by laughing them off with her kid.
"I did have to tell him after the MRI (scan which confirmed her illness)," she shared. "I said, 'I have something called multiple sclerosis,' and he nearly cried and said, 'Will it kill you?' And I said, 'No, I mean we never know what kills us, Arthur. But this is not the doctor telling me I'm dying.' And he was like, 'Oh, OK!' "
Selma insists she is now doing "very well", given the circumstances, and she is optimistic about her future, as her doctor believes she could regain "90 per cent" of her abilities back "within a year".
But when she does have a "difficult day," she has learned it's OK to just stay in bed and rest. "You just have to, you can't do it all!" she shrugged. "It's fine to feel really crappy and say, 'I gotta.' And my son gets it, and now I've learned not to feel guilty."
Despite her health woes, Selma hasn't given up on her career - she features in forthcoming Netflix series "Another Life", and has two other projects in post-production.
