Selma Blair Posts Eye-Opening Throwback From Before MS Diagnosis: 'Already Exhausting and Confusing'
Before Selma Blair was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, she was still exhausted and confused by [...]
Before Selma Blair was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, she was still exhausted and confused by symptoms from her deteriorating health. The actress, 47, shared a video Friday that she took before she knew she had MS, although she said she was already getting significant help from her friend Bonny Burke to get through the day.
"I didn't know yet how much I would rely on my friend, Bonny. This was shot well over a year ago," Blair captioned the throwback clip. "She was already driving me most of the time as it was already exhausting and confusing in the MS flare I fought acknowledging."
In the clip, Blair talks to the camera and struggles to remember what she wanted to say. "You know what's easy to keep track of? Two things. You know what's hard to keep track of? Two thousand things," she said before pointing the camera toward Burke. "She's going to simplify my life."
The Cruel Intentions star was diagnosed with MS in August 2018, publicly revealing her diagnosis two months later. The MS flare has limited her ability to walk, led to difficulty speaking and has left her in intense pain. After months of unsuccessful treatments, she was encouraged to try a stem cell transplant and an "aggressive" course of chemotherapy, which she opted for this past summer.
She said in October 2019 that she's still recovering "but overall, it went pretty smoothly."
"I haven't talked about it much yet because I wanted to show everyone that the proof is in the pudding, but my pudding is still kind of scrambled. I don't want to scare people away," she said.
In the Instagram post, Blair thanked Burke for holding her together over the last year and a half. "She has kept track of the minutiae of my days. She has hugged me and asked whether I have eaten when I get low. She has loved me through the silliness and tears. And I love her," Blair wrote.
Last week, Blair showed a close-up photo of her new hair as it grows back "short and grey" following chemotherapy. In the post, she gave her followers "an in depth look at hair growth, post chemotherapy," amid her ongoing treatment. She explained that she had cut her hair short "to transition myself and my son for impending baldness."
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"Easy. Baldness came," she continued. "I didn't shave head to that end. Of course it fell out. Shiny. Pale dome. Nice enough. It took two months to begin regrowth And it came in fine and pale and very sparse. I shaved it. It looked too sad. For me."
She wrote that she has tried several different styles in past months and attempted to "let it grown back," though it was "patchy in color and I felt like dying it brown."
"Ridiculous! I really only succeeded in dying my scalp," she wrote. "After a week, I buzzed shorter with clippers and a few weeks later, here we are. A charcoal, thinnish, patchy charcoal head. I will see how a pixie grows in. Or I will buzz again."
She wrote further that the only style she's no longer considering is her long hair. "It seems to be too much to have long hair again," she explained. "So I will leave it short and grey, something I have never before wanted to do. I equated it with giving up. And maybe giving up long, brown hair, complete with time consuming highlights and lowlights isn't necessarily a give up. Give in. Embrace. Sure. I'll try it."
Photo credit: Craig Barritt / Stringer / Getty