Ellen DeGeneres has officially stepped away from Hollywood after the release of her Netflix comedy special For Your Consideration, which dropped last Tuesday. In the special, the 66 year-old comedian revealed that she has recently received three devastating diagnoses that she is still struggling to come to terms with.
DeGeneres’ Three Diagnoses
DeGeneres told her fans that she’s been diagnosed with osteoporosis, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and ADHD. She revealed that she took a “stupid bone density test” at the recommendation of her doctor and learned that she had “full-on osteoporosis.”
“I don’t even know how I’m standing up right now,” she admitted. “I’m like a human sandcastle. I could disintegrate in the shower.”
The National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases states that osteoporosis is a “bone disease that develops when bone mineral density and bone mass decreases, or when the structure and strength of bone changes.” The disease can “lead to a decrease in bone strength that can increase the risk of broken bones.”
DeGeneres later confessed that “it’s hard to be honest about aging and seem cool.”
“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,'” she lamented.
DeGeneres Diagnosed With OCD
Making matters even worse, DeGeneres’ therapist diagnosed her with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). She explained that she’d entered therapy as she was “trying to deal with all the hatred that was coming at me.”
This was seemingly a reference to DeGeneres’ toxic workplace scandal. In 2020, DeGeneres was accused of presiding over a set that was wrought with problems. DeGeneres herself was accused of being mean to her staffers, even allegedly banning her employees from making eye contact with her.
This was particularly damning for DeGeneres, who famously ended every episode of her talk show by telling viewers to “be kind to one another.” The final episode of her talk show aired in May of 2022 after 19 seasons.
Full Story: Ellen DeGeneres Shares How She Feels About The End Of Her Show
DeGeneres ‘Didn’t Know What OCD Was’
“I may have OCD because a therapist said so and I said, ‘Yes I am very organized,’ because I thought that was the O,” DeGeneres said in her special.
“I didn’t know what OCD was…I was raised in a religion, Christian Science, that doesn’t acknowledge diseases or disorders,” she continued. “So when I was growing up, nobody talked about anything. There was no discussion of anything.”
“I look back now and I realize my dad for sure had OCD,” DeGeneres added of her late father Elliott. “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.”
DeGeneres even asked her actress wife Portia de Rossi of Arrested Development fame if she thought that the comedian might have OCD.
“And she said, ‘Yes, you do,’” DeGeneres recalled. “Barely got that sentence out really. It’s funny. I’ve never thought of myself as obsessive. I think of myself as careful and everyone else careless and out of control.”
Check out a trailer for this comedy special below.
DeGeneres Diagnosed With ADD
Meanwhile, DeGeneres said that she also has attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD).
“My ADD makes it really hard to sit down and focus on anything at all,” DeGeneres stated. “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? Why do people ask people questions they know they don’t have the answer to?”
“It’s hard for me to focus,” DeGeneres confessed. “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.”
DeGeneres concluded this special by saying that it will be her last before she retires. Indeed, she explained that in the past, she “has cared far too much what other people think of me.”
“But with time you gain perspective, which is one good thing about aging,” she said. “It doesn’t totally make up for arthritis or brittle bones. But with perspective, you realize that caring what people think to a degree is healthy, but not if it affects your mental health. So after a lifetime of caring, I just can’t anymore. So I don’t.”
Given everything that DeGeneres is grappling with when it comes to her health, perhaps she’s making the right decision in retiring. Only time will tell if she actually sticks to her guns and gives up entertainment for good!
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