Actress Tatum O’Neal opening up about her struggle with rheumatoid arthritis - and the toll its taken on her body in an Instagram post. O'Neal, 56, shared a photo of her back, covered with surgery scars and bruises, to demonstrate what it's like to live with rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
Watch Have you heard about Rheumatoid Arthritis?
Tatum is no stranger to adversity. A child of Hollywood, she has had “such a difficult life in some respects, although such a great life in others,” she says. After receiving an Oscar for the role of Addie, which she played alongside her father, actor Ryan O’Neal, she went on to star in Bad News Bears, Little Darlings and International Velvet. A young fan, like I was then, would have assumed she lived a happy, glamorous life. But in her 2004 book, A Paper Life, Tatum revealed a childhood of neglect and emotional and physical abuse and a family immersed in drugs and plagued with addiction. She, too, has struggled with addiction.
She described how her RA seemed to come on slowly and then all at once. She was already in what she describes as a “low state,” dealing with pain from several neck and back disc surgeries in recent years and unhappy knees – one kept ballooning, refusing to heal after meniscal repair surgery. But this was different. “The pain changed in nature and location. It was scary,” she says. She had difficulty walking, and thought, “Wow, something is so bad.”
Then one night it hit her hard. Her right hand swelled and ached “unbelievably.” A rheumatologist diagnosed RA, and an MRI revealed damage in her ankles. “That was a sad day,” she says.
Tatum began taking a biologic drug, giving herself shots in her stomach once a week, and methotrexate. Not long after, she was hospitalized with pneumonia three times in four months. Doctors were puzzled. Finally, a pulmonologist realized her lungs were reacting badly to methotrexate. “It’s been a tough road,” says Tatum, “very, very scary for my children and for all of us.”
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