- Selma Blair shared a touching Instagram video in honor of Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Month.
- “May we all find the strength to persevere,” she captioned the post.
- The actress first revealed her MS diagnosis in 2019 and announced she was in remission last year, but she is still managing the chronic illness.
March is multiple sclerosis (MS) awareness month, and Selma Blair—who has been very transparent about her MS journey—is spreading awareness by sharing her strongest and weakest moments with the autoimmune condition.
“March is #MSAwareness month,” she captioned a recent Instagram video. “May we all find the strength to persevere.” The clip shared a montage of snippets from Blair’s recovery—ranging from her pictured in the hospital, bed-ridden, and receiving treatment to others of her confidently posing with a cane and dancing on the beach.
Since revealing her diagnosis in 2019, the actress, 49, has come a long way—announcing last year that she entered remission after a stem cell transplant. Now, she continues to receive treatments such as at-home intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG), per a January Instagram update, which helps the body fight infection, but she’s currently living relatively pain-free.
View this post on Instagram
That wasn’t always the case, as evidenced by her raw documentary Introducing, Selma Blair, which chronicles her daily life with MS. At one point, the actress genuinely believed she was dying, which was caught on camera. “I’m sorry, I can’t talk right now,” she says into a toy phone during the film’s trailer. “We’re shooting the final days of my life.”
Along with the stem cell transplant, Blair underwent chemotherapy as a “last resort” to halt the disease’s progression. In 2019, she revealed that she received more of the drug than most cancer patients.
“The hardest part was that I had no idea how rigorous the chemo would be,” she told The Purist last year. “You wouldn’t be able to easily survive that amount of chemo without [infusing] new stem cells.”
View this post on Instagram
Thankfully for Blair, the treatment worked. “I think there are so many ways to heal. Finding the willpower is huge because I can’t say my whole life I felt it,” she continued. “I would really give in to the dumps, and just let that carry me away. I don’t have that anymore. I don’t want to do that. I want good things.”
Now, she’s celebrating every win she can—like returning to horseback riding for the first time in months or graduating her service dog from training.
According to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, MS is an unpredictable disease that affects the brain and spinal cord. By disrupting communication from the brain to the body, it triggers an autoimmune response that attacks the central nervous system, resulting in an array of symptoms including numbness, tingling, mood changes, memory problems, pain, fatigue, blindness, and paralysis. There are over 25 600 people living with MS in Australia, with more than three quarters of them being women, according to Better Health Channel.
Newsletter
