Joni Mitchell, who turns 82 today, frequently uses a wheelchair, sparking concern among fans about her well-being.
What many may not realize is that Mitchell has battled numerous health challenges throughout her life, ranging from childhood polio to the enigmatic Morgellons disease.
As a child, Mitchell was struck by polio and hospitalized for treatment.
She endured a bleak holiday season confined to a polio ward, yet remained determined to return home for Christmas.
The music icon amazed her loved ones and medical team by successfully teaching herself to walk once more.
“My mother came to visit me once. With a mask over her face and a haunted look in her eyes, she came in,” she said per Cheat Sheet. “I just kept working my legs, working my legs, and then one day I said to them, ‘I want to try and walk,'” she continued.
She was forced to relearn how to walk, speak, and play the guitar.
During a 2022 interview on CBS Mornings (per NME), Mitchell revealed her experience of performing guitar on-stage for the first time in decades.
“I’m learning,” she said. “I’m looking at videos that are on the net, to see where to put my fingers. It’s amazing… when you have an aneurysm, you don’t know how to get into a chair. You don’t know how to get out of bed. You have to learn all these things again. You’re going back to infancy, almost.”
When Mason asked her how she discovered the strength to tackle these challenges again, Mitchell admitted she wasn’t sure but noted that her brain surgeon told her she possessed “will and grit.
“Do you think you have will and grit?”, the reporter queried, to which Mitchell responded: “Yeah, I think I do.”
In addition to everything else, Mitchell has been grappling with a rare, contentious medical condition known as Morgellons Disease for years.
This self-diagnosed condition, which many physicians argue is delusional, had been preventing her from performing and traveling for years prior to her aneurysm.
In 2010, Mitchell confessed to the LA Times that she suffers from a “weird, incurable disease that seems like it’s from outer space, but my health’s the best it’s been in a while. Two nights ago, I went out for the first time since Dec. 23. I don’t look so bad under incandescent light, but I look scary under daylight.”
Mitchell detailed her condition: “Fibers in a variety of colors protrude out of my skin like mushrooms after a rainstorm: they cannot be forensically identified as animal, vegetable or mineral. Morgellons is a slow, unpredictable killer – a terrorist disease: it will blow up one of your organs, leaving you in bed for a year.
“But I have a tremendous will to live: I’ve been through another pandemic – I’m a polio survivor, so I know how conservative the medical body can be.”
In her 2014 book Joni Mitchell: In Her Own Words (per Billboard), Mitchell wrote that she couldn’t wear clothing or leave her house for several years. “Sometimes it got so I’d have to crawl across the floor,” she said.
“My legs would cramp up, just like a polio spasm. It hit all of the places where I had polio.”
Despite what Mitchell endured, physicians continue to question whether the illness is legitimate. According to Billboard: “Sufferers say fibers grow from lesions in the skin, potentially because of tiny parasites. Crawling sensations, extreme itching, and general fatigue/mental fog are also named as symptoms of the condition.”
The Mayo Clinic maintains that the ailment is psychological, though Mitchell insists she aims to raise public consciousness about it.
Speaking to The Star in 2013, she declared, “I’m not cured but I’ve found a helpful physician way outside the box. Western medicine says this doesn’t even exist; it’s a psychotic disease. It’s not.”
In 2020, Mitchell revealed to Cameron Crowe (per the Guardian) that she was “inching” her way forward and showing improvement.
Beyond all that, Mitchell has battled sleeplessness as well, though that stems from her persistent anxiety about break-ins following years of enduring “stalker after stalker after stalker” on her property.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.the-express.com ’
