6 Celebrities Share What Being Immunocompromised Is Really Like for Them (2024)

Your immune system is your body’s first line of defense for fending off harmful substances that can lead to gnarly infections. It filters out unwanted invaders, like certain viruses or bacteria, with the help of special immune cells, antibodies, and various security checkpoints (like your skin, digestive system, and lymphatic system), per Johns Hopkins Medicine. If you’re immunocompromised, one or more of those systems don’t fire on all cylinders, which weakens your body’s defenses and makes you more susceptible to illnesses.

As we’ve learned during the pandemic, immunocompromised people often have to move through life with extra caution to protect their health—and no two individuals’ needs are the same. Conditions affecting the immune system are often invisible to others, but plenty of celebrities have spoken about their own experiences with being immunocompromised. Below, they share their stories about what it’s like living with weakened immunity.

1. Kesha

In June, Kesha exclusively revealed to SELF that she had been diagnosed with common variable immunodeficiency (CVID), a primary immunodeficiency disease (PIDD) that puts her at risk of developing recurrent—and potentially serious—infections. The cause isn’t fully understood, but it’s believed to be linked to a mix of genetic and environmental factors that limit a person’s ability to produce enough protective antibodies. In Kesha’s case (like 25% of people with the condition), consistent infections are joined by autoimmune issues that cause the immune system to mistakenly attack healthy parts of the body in an attempt to protect it. CVID can also come with uncomfortable symptoms, such as breathing difficulties, gastrointestinal problems, pain and swelling in the joints, and fatigue.

Before Kesha was diagnosed, she tried to just work around the tiredness she often felt. “I had a really hard time saying no to interviews or photo shoots,” she explained. “It led to severe exhaustion physically and mentally.” Now she prioritizes rest to stay well. “I learned after my diagnosis that sleep is the most important thing,” she said. “I feel like I’m just playing catch-up on my teens and twenties still. But I try to get as much sleep as possible, and I have to protect that fiercely.”

2. Selena Gomez

Gomez has long been open about her experience with lupus, an autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks its own tissues, causing inflammation in the joints, skin, heart, lungs, kidneys, and elsewhere. The condition results in a slew of symptoms, including chronic pain, fatigue, fever, mouth sores, and kidney problems.

Gomez first discussed her lupus diagnosis publicly in 2015 after she took a break from her global tour to undergo chemotherapy and mentally process it all. “I could’ve had a stroke,” she told Billboard. “I locked myself away until I was confident and comfortable again.”

In 2017, Gomez revealed that she was additionally diagnosed with lupus nephritis—a lupus complication that affects the kidneys—and had to receive a kidney transplant that year. “It actually got to a point where it was life or death,” Gomez said at the 2017 Lupus Research Alliance’s Breaking Through Gala, per E! News. “Thankfully, one of my best friends [Francia Raisa] gave me her kidney, and it was the ultimate gift of life. And I am doing quite well now.”

The 31-year-old has continued to candidly speak about living with lupus—including how it affects her mental health and the medication side effects she experiences—in the hope of raising awareness about chronic illness. “Yeah, we have days where maybe we feel like sh*t, but I would much rather be healthy and take care of myself,” she said in a TikTok live stream shared on Twitter in February. “My medications are important, and I believe they’re what helps me,” she continued, “I just wanted to…encourage anyone out there who feels any sort of shame for exactly what they’re going through, and no one knows the real story.”

3. Venus Williams

In 2011, after withdrawing from the US Open due to illness, Venus Williams was diagnosed with Sjogren’s syndrome, an autoimmune condition characterized by joint pain, fatigue, and its hallmark symptoms: dry eyes and dry mouth. It took the tennis player seven years of feeling “off” to finally get answers about her condition, she said in a 2022 YouTube video.

“I literally got too sick to continue to play professional sports,” she recalled. She said she wasn’t able to compete for around nine months. “I had to learn how to rest, there were points where I just pushed myself…I would literally crash and couldn’t get up,” she added.

In a 2019 interview with Prevention, she detailed the struggle to receive a diagnosis, especially given that so many autoimmune diseases are difficult to detect. “I felt out of control,” she said.

Thankfully, Williams received treatment that worked—but her healing didn’t happen overnight. “In the beginning, I just had to wait to get better,” she told Prevention. “One of the medications I had took six months to set in. There was another that took one to three months. It was kind of a waiting game until you can go back to what you had been doing,” she continued. “Before I was on medication, the quality of my life wasn’t as good because I was extremely uncomfortable. Just being alive was very uncomfortable. I was exhausted to the point that I was just always uncomfortable or in pain.”

Williams is now back on the court thanks to the help of her doctors and supportive lifestyle choices. “I live with Sjogren’s syndrome every day, and I continue to find a way to make a life and make a career and make the best life out of it,” she said in the YouTube video. “It isn’t always easy, but that’s a part of the challenge.”

4. Carrie Ann Inaba

In 2021, Carrie Ann Inaba left The Talk to focus on her health. In her adult life, she has been diagnosed with an array of autoimmune conditions, including lupus, Sjogren’s syndrome, and rheumatoid arthritis, as she wrote on her blog Carrie Ann Conversations.

“When I first got diagnosed, some encouraged me to keep my struggles to myself, but I’ve found that it’s always been better to be honest about my needs and realities than to stay silent. I believe strongly in sharing my journey,” Inaba wrote in a 2021 post.

Over the last two years, Inaba has worked with a team of medical professionals to tailor her treatment plan and make lifestyle adjustments that support her health. Now she’s dedicated to being an autoimmune warrior and an advocate for others with invisible illnesses. “I want to share what I’m doing so I can help people,” she told Yahoo last year. “I’m more well now than I’ve been in my life…I’m so much more conscious now of what it takes to maintain wellness.”

5. Sarah Hyland

Modern Family’s Sarah Hyland was born with kidney dysplasia, a congenital disease in which the organ didn’t develop fully in utero, per the American Urological Association. The condition caused Hyland to experience kidney failure at 21 years old. In order to save her life, she underwent a transplant with a kidney donated by her father. In 2016, her body began to reject it, as she told SELF in a 2018 interview. “When you have an organ transplant, it's basically a foreign thing in your body,” she explained. “Your immune system will want to attack it and be like, ‘What is this? This is not supposed to be here.’”

In 2017, Hyland went on dialysis, a treatment that filters waste from the blood when the kidneys can’t. Doctors removed the donated kidney that year. Shortly thereafter, her younger brother gave her one of his. Now the 32-year-old is in stable health, but will take immunosuppressants for the rest of her life. These drugs keep her body from rejecting the new kidney, but they also increase her risk of developing infections, per the Cleveland Clinic. It’s going well, despite the fact that she can no longer enjoy her favorite citrus because it interferes with the meds. “The thing that I miss most is grapefruit,” she told SELF. “I f*cking love grapefruit.”

6. Selma Blair

In 2018, Selma Blair received a diagnosis that made sense of 40 years’ worth of debilitating symptoms. She was told she had multiple sclerosis, a neurodegenerative autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks healthy nerve fibers of the brain and spine, impacting mobility, speech, and brain function.

Blair’s symptoms included throbbing headaches, consistent fevers, and numb limbs that “felt out of control,” as she wrote in her memoir, Mean Baby. By 2021, after undergoing chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant, Blair entered remission, meaning she “stopped losing abilities,” she told SELF in January. “I’m so much better, but it haunts my physical cells. It’s there. 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.”

The Cruel Intentions actress isn’t letting that stop her from advocating for others. She did so in her memoir, in her documentary Introducing, Selma Blair, and in an appearance on Dancing With the Stars that moved its judges to tears. “I don’t find the advocacy trying,” she told SELF. “I know it’s for other people more than myself, and it makes me feel better. It really does.”

Related:

• I Thought I Just Got Sicker Than Other People—Until a Blood Test Led to a Life-Changing Diagnosis
• 4 Big Things You Should Know About Primary Immunodeficiency Diseases
• What Causes a Weakened Immune System?