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.”
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
![https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516-320-80.jpg)
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.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
-
Ukraine's Olympians: going for gold in the line of fire
Under the Radar Hundreds of the country's athletes have died in battle, while those who remain deal with the psychological toll of war and prospect of Russian competitors
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK Published
-
'Democrats now have a chance to present a vigorous, compelling case'
Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
By Justin Klawans, The Week US Published
-
What has Kamala Harris done as vice president?
In Depth It's not uncommon for the second-in-command to struggle to prove themselves in a role largely defined by behind-the-scenes work
By Theara Coleman, The Week US Published