ABC(LOS ANGELES) — Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Yolanda Hadid opened up about her battle with Lyme disease — which she called an “invisible disability” — revealing how, at one point, the pain it caused was so severe that she contemplated taking her own life.
“This is such an invisible disability, where you look beautiful on the outside yet you’re dying on the inside,” Hadid said in an emotional interview with ABC News’ Robin Roberts. “That’s what people are judged with every day.”
“It didn’t just happen to me; it happens to everyone who suffers from Lyme,” Hadid added of the judgment she received from those who don’t understand the disease. “Including my own daughter, who’s on the cover of magazines, yet people don’t know how much she really struggles behind the scenes.”
Hadid said her supermodel daughter Bella Hadid, as well as her son, Anwar Hadid, also suffer from Lyme disease. Her oldest daughter, supermodel Gigi Hadid, does not suffer from the ailment.
“Anwar — he’s OK,” Yolanda Hadid said. “He’s been treated for two years and he’s really good. But Bella — it’s something she deals with every day of her life.”
Yolanda Hadid said she currently feels about “90 percent” well.
“I still have some brain issues, where my scanner is off, where sometimes I have a hard time with word retrieval and things like that,” she added.
The former model said she struggled with her health during the entire time she filmed The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
“The minute I got on the show, I got sick. I’ve never worked on that show with a normal brain,” she said. “I was always struggling and always trying to hold on, and keep my job.”
The mother of three also revealed that, at one point, her pain was so severe that she even contemplated taking her own life.
“I think in that moment I was so desperate, and in so much pain, like sweating on the bathroom floor in some hotel in Florida, trying to please other people,” she said. “I remember laying in the ocean and going, ‘Just take me. I just cannot live one more day.’ “
“In the same moment that I thought that, the picture of my kids came up, and I’m going, like, ‘What are you thinking?,’ ” she said, adding that she wanted to be “honest” about that moment because there could be others who “throw your hands up in the air and go, ‘I’ve tried everything. I just cannot go one more minute.’ “
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