Tisha Campbell reveals she’s in remission from sarcoidosis: ‘Have not been sick ever since I got a divorce’
"I have been in remission for four years now," the actress said. "They can't find it at the base of my brain at all."
Tisha Campbell is sharing an update about her health.
The actress revealed that she has been in remission from sarcoidosis, an inflammatory disease, for years during an interview on “the mibo show” podcast on Wednesday. Campbell shared the news in front of an audience at the Johnson & Johnson headquarters in New Brunswick, N.J., where the episode was recorded.
“I have been in remission for four years now,” she told former music executive Shanti Das, who hosts the podcast. “They can’t find it at the base of my brain at all.”
The “Martin” alum told People in 2011 that she had been battling sarcoidosis for almost 10 years and managed her symptoms through diet and exercise. Sarcoidosis is a disease in which “the immune system overreacts, causing groups of cells to form clusters of inflamed tissue called ‘granulomas’ in one or more organs of the body,” according to the American Lung Association. Black women are three times more likely to be diagnosed with the disease than white women, the association reports.
During Wednesday’s interview, Campbell shared that she was afraid of getting sick in the past because “every cold took me to the hospital.”
“I haven’t gotten sick, not one time. And I was so scared to get Covid because I thought, ‘If I get Covid, I’m gonna die,’ ” the actress said. “…Just every sniffle, allergies… It would build up and I would get sick.”
“But I have not been sick ever since I got a divorce,” she joked, referencing her 2020 split from her ex-husband, actor Duane Martin.
Campbell went on to reveal that she was diagnosed with the disease during the filming of “My Wife and Kids” many years ago. The “School Daze” actress said that she was suffering from a cold that would not go away.
“I had this cold — what I assumed was a cold — for a very long time. I had taken everything over the counter, under the counter — behind the counter, not under the counter, [but] probably did some of that too,” she said with a laugh. “I just could not breathe.”
“It felt like an elephant was on my chest and I remember being on the set of ‘My Wife and Kids’ and asking, you know, the [assistant directors] if they could call a doctor to come to the set because, you know, at this point, I know I have to have some type of, like, pneumonia,” she said.
Campbell recalled shooting a scene where she had to sing “Ease On Down the Road,” and her disease took a heavy toll. Shortly afterward, she was diagnosed with “stage one sarcoidosis on both of her lungs and at the base of her brain, making her lymph nodes swell and making it hard for her to breathe,” People reported.
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“It’s hard for me to watch this scene,” she shared. “I had to sing ‘Ease On Down the Road.’ I could see after I finished the song — and you can see it too because it’s on television — that I was panicked in my eyes. I can’t breathe, but I was continuing on with the scene.”
“I’m just telling y’all the freaking truth, stress is a killer,” Campbell added. “Yeah, it is. And it’s connected to your body.”
“I am here to say that I am so proud of where I am in my mental health and my physical health now,” she concluded. “Because I understood that they are a combination. Whether you have any type of disorder, it’s important to understand you got to do everything that’s right.”
