Selma Blair is looking back at the moment she knew something was amiss before she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
The “Cruel Intentions” star was appearing in a show for designer Christian Siriano in New York City when her left leg went numb.
“I had always wanted to be a model. And this was my first show, my only show. I thought I had died and gone to heaven,” she told SELF in a video interview.
She was so keyed up in the moment, only to discover that the rush of it played a role in her condition.
“The day of this show was the first time that symptoms from my childhood, with my leg going out, happens during this show, and I realized adrenaline brings on my symptoms now of my leg turning numb and not really being able to feel where it’s hitting or how high and I couldn’t feel my left leg,” she said.
Blair says she if she could give any words of wisdom to herself at that moment in time, it would be to seek medical attention.
“And it was like going up and down and I’m just trying to look cool and kind of expressionless and in my mind, I’m going 'Ah!' So I don’t even know what I tell this younger self except for ‘Oh, it’s not in your head. You have MS. You should go to a doctor right away,’” she said.
Blair has previously spoken about her appearance at that Rinaldo show and how she knew something was wrong.
“It was on that runway, with the thrill of walking in the show, that I suddenly lost feeling in my left leg,” she told Town & Country in 2021. “But I was on a runway and thinking, 'What do I do?”
Blair, who revealed her MS diagnosis in October 2018 and went on to compete on “Dancing with the Stars” in 2022, recently told Self that she is in remission.
“I’m so much better, but it haunts my physical cells. It’s there,” she said. “Some people wake up two years later, and they’re like, ‘I’m healed! Colors are brighter!’ But I never had that moment. I just stopped having regression.”