In an extract from her new memoir, the actor remembers the moment she found out she had multiple sclerosis – and finally understanding why her body had been betraying her for years
That thing you didn’t know about. It had been there all along. The pieces started falling into place. I’d suffered from symptoms that would come and go ever since childhood. Fevers, urinary tract infections, nerve pain and numbness, depression. Symptoms I tried to dull with alcohol, but the effect was temporary. Symptoms that only grew stronger over time. Around 2008, I began to lose feeling in my legs in a way I never had before. They started to give up, inexplicably. I’d been riding again, which I loved. One day, I was walking down a hill with my horse when, out of nowhere, I fell. The ground just slipped out from under me.
I wasn’t binge drinking then. In fact, I felt I was in a good place: I was happy, I was active, I had work. I decided, since I wasn’t drinking, it must be diet-related. I hired a chef to make macrobiotic, mostly vegetarian meals, inspired by Alicia Silverstone’s site The Kind Life. I ate tempura and fish in special sauces, made pots of green soups. I went to chiropractors, energy workers, every kind of healer. (What’s ironic to me now is that I spent so much of my life consulting experts, looking for signs, when all along there were signs right in front of me.)
