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2 months ago
7 Ellen DeGeneres is opening up about her health… and attempting to court some serious sympathy!
Of course, the 66-year-old comedian is still feeling the after-effects of the toxic workplace scandal that brought down her daytime talk show empire. She’s been out on the comedy circuit in recent months trying her hand at a comeback. And, uh, it hasn’t always been going so well. But now she’s got a new Netflix special out, one she’s calling her last. We’ll believe that when we see it. One thing is clear — she’s obviously hoping to get back in the public’s good graces with it!
The Ellen DeGeneres Show alum dropped her special For Your Approval on the streaming giant on Tuesday, and over the last couple days, fans have been tuning in to see what it’s all about. Well, it’s all about Ellen getting older! And sicker…
Related: Ellen DeGeneres Is Still Funny, BUT…
During the special, Ellen revealed she has “full-on osteoporosis.” As you may know, that’s a disease that weakens the bones and causes them to break more easily as a person ages. She says doctors discovered it after she took a bone density test. And according to the National Institutes of Health, it affects about one in every five women over age 50 — so, yeah, she’s right in that target range. Ellen explained:
“I don’t even know how I’m standing up right now. I’m like a human sandcastle. I could disintegrate in the shower. It’s hard to be honest about aging and seem cool.”
Ouch!
She went on to add:
“I had excruciating pain one day and I thought I tore a ligament or something and I got an MRI and they said, ‘No, it’s just arthritis.’ I said, ‘How did I get that?’ And he said, ‘Oh it just happens at your age.'”
Both osteoporosis in her bones AND arthritis in her joints?! Ugh!
But the physical ailments are only half the news here. Ellen also revealed during the special that she has several psychological battles ongoing, too.
For one, the stand-up comic recently learned she has obsessive compulsive disorder. Per the Mayo Clinic, OCD patients “feel driven to do compulsive acts” to ease the stress of “a pattern of unwanted thoughts.” DeGeneres revealed:
“I may have OCD because a therapist said so and I said, ‘Yes I am very organized,’ because I thought that was the O. I didn’t know what OCD was. I was raised in a religion, Christian Science, that doesn’t acknowledge diseases or disorders. So when I was growing up, nobody talked about anything. There was no discussion of anything.”
She also noted how her dad “for sure had OCD” when she was growing up, even though it wasn’t diagnosed or spoken about:
“I look back now and I realize my dad for sure had OCD. He would check the doorknob 15 times before we’d leave, he’d check the faucet 15 times, he would unplug all the appliances before we left the house because lightning could strike and it could catch fire. They say it could be hereditary.”
Wow…
And that’s still not all! The former sitcom star also revealed to her Netflix audience that she struggles with attention deficit disorder. Today, that ailment is known as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD; per the Centers for Disease Control, “ADD” is now considered an outdated term. But regardless, sufferers tend to struggle with paying attention, and they sometimes have difficult controlling impulsive behaviors. In that way, Ellen revealed in her special that she’s long fought an uphill battle:
“My ADD makes it really hard to sit down and focus on anything at all. I mean, do you know how hard it was for me to put this together? Of course you don’t. Why would I ask that question? It’s hard for me to focus.”
She summed it up as best she could, too — with a joke! The comic quipped:
“So, I have ADD, I have OCD, I’m losing my memory. But I think I’m well-adjusted because I obsess on things, but I don’t have the attention span to stick with it, and I quickly forget what I was obsessing about in the first place. So, it takes me all the way around to being well adjusted, I think.”
Ha!
Hey, sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying, right?
Look, call us cynical, but we can’t help but wonder to what degree she’s revealing all this now amid a push to resurrect her public image after it exploded amid all those toxic workplace allegations. She wouldn’t be the first star to feel they were booted from showbiz unfairly and tried to figure out a new route back to relevancy! Just saying!!!
Thoughts, y’all?? Share ’em (below)…
[Image via Netflix/YouTube]
