Five years ago, actress Selma Blair was finally given some “relief” when doctors confirmed that she had multiple sclerosis, after decades of going undiagnosed with severe pain.
Blair has maintained her celebrity, but she admits that her career was ultimately stunted due to her condition, which significantly worsened after giving birth to her son, Arthur, in 2011.
“The MS flared very obviously, when I was in labor,” she shared in a new interview with Glamour. “My body started going through distress as bodies can, and, of course, I didn’t know I had it. And so the moment Arthur was born, I went from this kind of blissful pregnancy to utter devastation.”
SELMA BLAIR WENT UNDIAGNOSED WITH MS FOR 40 YEARS; SHE’S WORKING WITH CHARITY TO FIND A CURE
“Everything was too overwhelming… I couldn’t be in a relationship. There was nothing I could do except be a mother. And I was brutally tired, and I didn’t have a support system. I didn’t know how to set one up,” she said.
Blair and designer Jason Bleick, Arthur’s father, split after he was born.
At the time, Blair tried to further understand her pain, meeting with doctors, who told her it was “normal” for new moms “to be in pain all the time.”
“I cannot stay up. I cannot drive a car. I cannot see. I’m bumping into things. I’m dragging my legs,” Blair remembers telling professionals. Some attributed the pain to stretched tendons from childbirth, while others suggested she was suffering from postpartum depression. Blair now knows that the “pure exhaustion” she was experiencing at the time was a result of her condition.
“I was totally out of the workforce, and I couldn’t earn money,” the “Cruel Intentions” actress admitted of how her career was impacted. At one point, she called her manager and implored, “We have to get me a job.”
Although Blair went on to book jobs, her pain was more consistent than work opportunities. “I was forcing myself on a plane, and I was getting vertigo,” she explained. “I would wake up, and I couldn’t move.”
“It was a very hard time in my life,” she revealed. “But it was the catalyst to become who I am now.” Today, Blair is still trying to find her way. She suffers from spasmodic dysphonia, a disorder related to MS that affects her speech, and often walks with a cane and service animal, but recognizes that she has been subjected to criticism for not necessarily presenting as a disabled person.
“This f—ing Karen, talking about disability, and look at her or carrying a coffee, walking a dog. She shouldn’t carry a coffee while walking that dog! If she can carry a coffee, she shouldn’t have a service dog,” Blair suggests her critics might be saying.
“I just have to think, ‘What can I do,’ so this can happen less to other people,” she says, adding that it’s “a personal point of necessity to stand up for other people when I wouldn’t stand up for myself.”