Selma Blair says she’s officially in remission from MS

After years of enduring a painful flare of multiple sclerosis, Selma Blair is now in remission. She happily shared the news at a screening for her new documentary, and credits her son, Arthur, for helping her get through her toughest days.

Blair was first diagnosed in 2018 after dealing with intense pain and loss of motor functions from MS, including the ability to use her left leg and speak without difficulty. She eventually decided to undergo a stem cell transplant and an “aggressive” round of chemotherapy to help jump-start her immune system.

“My prognosis is great. I’m in remission. Stem cell put me in remission,” Blair said. “It took about a year after stem cell for the inflammation and lesions to really go down.”

The documentary, Introducing Selma Blair, premieres on Netflix in October, and it follows Blair as she undergoes the hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). She says she wanted to do the documentary to “lead by example” for others who have MS.

When things got really tough—mentally and physically—during her painful, lengthy flare, Blair says she focused on her 10-year-old son Arthur. Being his mom, she says, is what helped her find the strength to face some of her toughest days.

“It’s not that MS was on a path killing me. I mean it was killing me with this flare lasting so long,” she said. “I was so burnt out. If there was an option to halt me, to rebalance after being hit so hard with that last flare, it’s absolutely for my son. I have no desire to leave him alone right now.”

Blair has been very candid about her life with MS, and being a single parent with a chronic illness. During the panel at the screening, she says she believes because she has a big platform and audience, that she thinks it’s important to raise awareness of the disease. Even if her experience doesn’t exactly mirror someone else’s, it’s bringing much-needed attention and understanding to a very complicated condition.

“This condition — or any condition of chronic illness or disability — is my story, and if that helps normalize, to open the door for other people to be comfortable telling their stories, that can also be enlightening and informative and helps to build new ways of love and support,” she says.

She says many people have reached out to her to thank her for normalizing chronic illness, especially when there’s a stigma of fear and discomfort surrounding it.

Recently, actress Christina Applegate revealed she was also diagnosed with MS, and actress Jamie Lynn Siegler has also had MS for several years.

“And we’re really getting off these shoulders what they’re going through and it creates a real rigidity and fear and a lot of people, and to hear that even just me showing up with a cane or willing to talk about something that might be embarrassing or oversharing to people, it was a key for a lot of people in finding comfort in themselves that I’ve heard of,” she says. “And that means everything to me.”