Selma Blair says that her doctors initially dismissed her Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis as another symptom that many moms often deal with on a daily basis: exhaustion. The Hollywood star is best known for her roles in films such as Cruel Intentions, The Sweetest Thing, and Legally Blonde.

Speaking to NBC News, the brunette beauty says that when she first realized that she wasn’t feeling well, doctors told her that everything seemed normal and that it might have been a common bout of parenting-related exhaustion. Blair welcomed her son, Arthur Saint Bleick, back in 2011 with her ex-partner Jason Bleick.

Even though the actress knew that something wasn’t right, her doctors assured her that everything was fine. This didn’t sit well with Blair, though, who often had to take a nap after doing simple day-to-day things like picking up her son after school. Health professionals describe multiple sclerosis, which is better known as MS, as a disease that can impact your brain, spinal cord, and the optic nerves in your eyes. It’s also when the body’s immune system is attacked by a material called myelin.

Some of the symptoms include unexplained pain and fatigue, two of which Blair suffered from. As a result, the actress went through a period of what she calls “self-medication.” The celebrity mother admits that she began to drink as a way to deal with her ongoing pain.

“My physical pain was so extreme that I would drink by myself. That was also a warning to me,” she admitted, “I’ve never been one who handled alcohol like a lady. I was self-medicating.”

It wasn’t until three years after her first symptom did Blair begin to take action.

“I cried. I had tears. 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,” she shared in her interviewv when asked how she felt about her diagnosis.

“There was some relief in that, because ever since my son was born, I was in an MS flare-up and didn’t know. I was giving it everything to seem normal.”

Blair recently made headlines for appearing at the star-studded Vanity Fair after party during Oscars weekend in February. She was applauded by her fans for looking stunningly beautiful and for carrying a cane on the red carpet, and also for opening up about her ongoing condition this year.

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