Turner’s battle with pain
Kathleen Turner suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, a crippling autoimmune disease that makes every move agony. “It is so hard to explain that kind of chronic, endless pain that you can’t do anything to relieve," she sai
Kathleen Turner has been in a bad way, says Nigel Farndale in the London Telegraph. The sultry actress suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, a crippling autoimmune syndrome that makes every move agony. “RA is a very bad disease,” she says. “Very difficult. You have a permanent low-level fluey feeling, a constant temperature and nausea. You think, Get the f--- outta my body!” The diagnosis, which came in 1991, when she was 37, was a complete shock. “The day I was told, I went from the hospital to kindergarten for a meeting with my daughter’s teacher and looked at these little chairs and started crying because I knew there was no way I would be able to get into that chair.” For years, Turner tried to deaden the pain with vodka; she succeeded only in becoming an alcoholic. “It is so hard to explain that kind of chronic, endless pain that you can’t do anything to relieve—can’t sit, stand, lie, anything. It hurts from the inside out. You will take any escape.” At one point, her daughter, Rachel, had to feed her because she couldn’t hold a spoon. But today, after many joint operations and intensive steroid therapy, Turner is doing better. “Rachel and I were going somewhere and I ran with her across a road and she said, ‘Mom, you ran!’ I never expected to again, having been told I would spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair.”
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
5 artfully drawn cartoons about Donald Trump's Epstein doodle
Cartoons Artists take on a mountainous legacy, creepy art, and more
-
Violent videos of Charlie Kirk’s death are renewing debate over online censorship
Talking Points Social media ‘promises unfiltered access, but without guarantees of truth and without protection from harm’
-
What led to Poland invoking NATO’s Article 4 and where could it lead?
TODAY'S BIG QUESTION After a Russian drone blitz, Warsaw’s rare move to invoke the important NATO statute has potentially moved Europe closer to continent-wide warfare