I had to take steroids every 8 hours to stay alive: Sushmita Sen opens up about her horrifying illness

By Rashita Sahni

on June 03, 2019

Sushmita Sen who battled a really "violent sickness" back in 2014 recently opened up about it. The actress appeared on Rajeev Masand's new show Women We Love and spoke about her fight with a hormonal disease for two years and coming out of it in 2016. The actress had earlier also revealed that she was once so ill that she thought she might die and that is what made her join Instagram.

She revealed that she went through a life-threatening disease and how she fought it like a boss. Speaking about the same, she said, "2014, I finished shooting Nirbaak, my Bengali film and I fell violently sick. And we could not figure out what had happened. And then a ray of tests took place and we discovered that after of course fainting finally and falling down and being rushed to the hospital, that there is a hormone in the body which is called Cortisol. So, my adrenal glands had stopped making it.”

She further stated, “I was lucky to come out of that fainting spell because I had gone into an adrenal crisis. So, the next thing after that would have been my organs backing up one by one. But for some reason, I came back from it and was declared steroid dependent for life which means that I had to take a medicine called hydrocortisone, which is a steroid every 8 hours to stay alive because the body no longer made that and needless to say, started the next two years of so much of trauma because I am in the public eye, I am a former Miss Universe, supposed to be this very beautiful woman and I have hair that’s falling and I am looking at it every day, I have become moon-faced and I have steroid deposits."

She also cleared that the steroids she took, were completely different. “This is not steroids that you take to work out. This is a completely different steroid that makes you put on weight. You start to lose your bone density, you start to have very high BP. I was very, very sick and I was still a single mum with two kids who needed me in different ways," said Sush.

Speaking about it further, she revealed, "If you take my energy away from me, who am I? Because that’s who I recognize with. So, now if you go back in time, in 2014 and 2016, you will see a very different Sushmita in all her public appearances but it taught me a lot."

Sushmita added, "During those 2 years, I promised myself, I will go down fighting. I was told by all the doctors to change my profession because the idea was, the stress management mechanism was no longer working in the body. In 2016 end, in October, I finally collapsed, badly. And when I collapsed I was rushed to Abu Dhabi because there is Cleaveland hospital there. I finished reaching Abu Dhabi, they took me off steroids, hospitalised me and they did the test again. They released me to go back to Dubai and I was barely reaching Dubai, I was driving down and the Doctor who is Turkish calls me and says, “Sushmita, have you taken the pill already?” I said no Doctor I have to eat something then I will take it. He said, “You need to stop right now”. I was like why should I stop again? So, he goes like “because your body is producing it.” He says, “in 35 years of my practice, somebody with an adrenal failure has never come back to producing cortisol again. I cannot even believe it and I have tested it 3 times.”, said the former Miss Universe.

Sushmita mentioned how for a very long time, she didn't know how to react to it. She said, "and then I stopped the steroids and from 2016 October until 2018 August, last year, I went through the worst withdrawal symptoms possible."