'Was declared steroid-dependent for life', Sushmita Sen opens up for first time about battling life-threatening disease

During Miss India finals, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan was considered as everyone's favourite and people were shocked to see Sushmita beating her and becoming the winner at the beauty queen contest. There were even reports making the rounds that this led to cold vibes between Aishwarya and Sushmita. However, when Sushmita was asked about it, she rubbished all those reports. She stated, "It was never anything like that. If you go back, luckily social media and interviews by you and other people at least on television, if you go back and retrace that journey, I have always been very warm to her. The idea that I have ever been cold with her is an absolute fallacy like it doesn't exist."

Sushmita went on to say, "I cannot speak for Aishwarya because she is a different person. There's the way she approaches things which is completely hers. But there was absolutely zero cold vibes."

On being asked, if they both are friends, Sushmita said, "For that, we have to spend time enough. But we are definitely very cordial, I meet her often even now after so many years and I see her now as a mom. Our lives have evolved and so beautifully. We were meant to be different people, we are different people."

(Photo via Instagram)

Rajeev Masand stated to Sushmita, "Apparently a couple of days before you were meant to leave for Miss Universe, you lost your passport". To which she said, "Correction, I'm glad you asked. No, I didn't lose it, it was given to Anupama Verma, then a very famous model and was also a coordinator for events. She had my passport for a show in Bangladesh and she needed it for some ID proofing. So I very confidently told Miss India at that time, 'Don't worry, my passport is safe with Anupama Verma.' She couldn't find it, she did take responsibility for it and said 'I don't know what I've done', but the timing of it was scary because I had to then go crying to my dad. I said I don't know what to do and my family wasn't from one of those well-connected networking people."

The interviewer further said, "I heard that they actually told you, 'You go for Miss World and Aishwarya go for Miss Universe'." For which Sushmita shared, "I was very angry because you win something and rightfully so, you're not requesting it. So now we have to come together and ensure that it gets done. It's easy to say now we can't find it, the passport is lost and Miss World is in November, so you go later, we will figure out your passport till then."

She concluded by saying, "I only cried in front of my father and I said that 'Baba I am not going for anything else. I rightfully deserve to go for this. So if I can't go, nobody else will go'. That's it and my father was like let me see what I can do and I will go on record to say that Mr Rajesh Pilot gave him all the support to get that passport and he himself went to say 'Look, she's representing our country so we got to aide this process instead of delay it.' And you better believe it that I went for Miss Universe, we know that."

(Photo via File Photo)

When asked about making a comeback, Sushmita stated, "We are brainstorming with really cool companies right now for both Netflix and Amazon Prime. We are kind of creating content that I fit right into. When I say that, remember I am coming back as a newcomer. No one can today say 'Oh, I loved her in that movie yesterday and I'd love for her to kind of stick to that'. You have forgotten everything."

She added, "I want to go on record to say this I have the most loyal and the most loving fan following. They have consistently over the years have been waiting for me to come back and I'd rather have that than 'I don't want to watch it again, man, I'm done watching her.' I have to do something to come back for them."

Sushmita opened up for the very first time about the illness she fought for more than two years from 2014. The actor shared it in detail.

Excerpts...

I finished shooting for my Bengali film Nirbaak, and I fell violently sick. We could not figure out what had happened. Then, an array of tests happened and after fainting and being rushed to the hospital, we discovered that my adrenal glands had stopped making cortisol. I was lucky to come out of that fainting spell because I had gone into an adrenal crisis.

The next thing, after that, would have been my organs packing up one by one. But for some reason, I came back from it and was declared steroid-dependent for life. Which means that I had to take a medicine called hydrocortisone, which is a steroid, every eight hours to stay alive because my body no longer made that.

Needless to say, started the next two years of so much trauma, because I'm in the public eye. I am a former Miss Universe and supposed to be this very beautiful woman. I have hair that's falling and I'm looking at it every day. I have become moon-faced and I have steroid deposits. You have to understand, this is not a steroid that you take while working out. This is completely different and makes you put on weight. You start to lose your bone density and have high blood pressure.

I was very, very sick and I was still a single mother with two kids who needed me, in different ways, to be there. I just was really mad with everything going on around me. Then I had a moment when I said, 'If you take my energy away from me, who am I?' Because that's who I recognise myself with. So now, if you go back in time between 2014 and 2016, you will see a very different Sushmita in all my public appearances, but it taught me a lot.

There is a test called the synacthen test, which they did, and both times, they declared me steroid-dependent for life. I was like, 'I won't be able to live with steroids in my body because I can see the side effects of this taking place already.' I couldn't open my eyes because they were swollen up. My eyesight was getting weaker. It was just because I was doing 60mg of steroids every day, which would go up to 100mg if I was doing a press conference or a show to accommodate energy.

During this time, a thought crossed my mind. 'If this does kill me, people would never know who I was.' They would only have versions of this article, that story. So one night, I just got on to Instagram and opened that page. The reason I don't follow anybody on it is that that's not what I got on to it for. I got on to it for telling you my life, with as much honesty as I have lived it so that when you look back, you can say, 'That is the Sushmita I knew! Not these other versions of her!

During those two years, I made a promise to myself that I would go down fighting and not as a patient. I was told by all the doctors that I need to change my profession because the idea was that the stress management mechanism was no longer working in the body. So if you're going to be an actor or in the public eye, it's going to bother you that you're losing your hair, face and skin. You're going to put on weight. I said, 'No, I won't give it up. I'm going to do it as much as I can and then be done when I'm done.

The doctors said not to do any anti-gravity because I had ACTH (adrenocorticotropic hormone) and cortisol, so no blood rushes to the brain. When they all gave me bad news, the first thing I did is call up my teacher and said, 'We start gymnastic rings. We get on anti-gravity.' Because if they are telling me that this is the only thing that I am not to do, I'm going to do it because I don't like who I'm becoming in the attempt to survive. This is not the best advice for everyone suffering from different things, but it's what my body needed to do.

I went back to yoga. I started to discover everything in my body and listen to it. And in 2016-end, in October, I finally collapsed badly. When I collapsed, I was rushed to a hospital in Abu Dhabi and God bless a few people in my life who bent backwards to take care of me.

I reached Abu Dhabi, they took me off steroids and hospitalised me. They did the synacthen test again and released me. I was on the way to Dubai and the doctor calls up and says, 'Sushmita, have you taken the pill already?' I said, no, I have to eat something and then I'll take it. He says, 'You need to stop right now!' I go like, 'Cold turkey on steroids? That's a bad idea, no? Why should I stop?' He says, 'Because your body is producing it. In 35 years of my practice, somebody with an adrenal failure has never come back to producing cortisol again! I cannot believe it. I tested three times because I did not want to risk giving you this news without being sure. You need to go cold turkey. You're going to suffer withdrawals, obviously. But I would prefer you suffer the withdrawals than subject your body to any more steroids.

I was stumped. I waited for this moment to finally hear these words but when it finally happened, I didn't know how to react to it for a very long time. I stopped the steroids from that point and from October 2016 up until August 2018, I went through the worst withdrawal possible. Everything was affected deeply, so it was not good. But throughout, I went back to training vigorously. I have been blessed to find doctors in India and abroad and there have been people who went out of their way to get me back on my feet.

It was reported that Sushmita met beau Rohman Shawl at a fashion event. But she set the record straight and gave out details about how it started. The former beauty queen said, "It's a very very beautiful serendipity story. He sent me a direct message on Instagram and I didn't check direct messages because I wasn't sure if you check it you may be allowing that person to start communicating with you. So, I had too many of these direct messages and I had not opened any and there it was."

She went on to say, "Touch screen phone ki Jai ho because I had gone to the DM to look at what all had come and I was scrolling through and this boy broke something in the room and I went talking to him and when I came back I had obviously opened one of the DMs and it was a message from him and I was like 'Oh my god, how did I do that, god I should never be talking when I am near a phone."

On seeing Rohman as a warm and passionate person, Sushmita decided to reply to him and she wrote, "Thank you so much, your message made my day, I wish you all the happiness in the world." To which Rohman replied, "I am jumping from one room to another, I cannot believe you responded."

Sushmita further shared, "And then, I got to know him slowly when I came back and that too was an open offer to come to play football with him." Instead, she asked him for coffee, then their beautiful love story started.

Sushmita concluded by saying, "And, that was it when I met this person, I felt I had known him my whole life. It was that simple."

When asked how she told her daughters Renee and Alisah that they are adopted, Sushmita replied, "We played opposites, tall short, and all that. I then said adopted and biological. So Renee said 'I'm adopted?' I said yes, biological is boring. You are special, you're born from the heart. And then she would tell everyone else, 'You're biological? You're boring'. I'm so glad that it worked both times like magic."

As Renee has turned 18 recently, she has the right to know about her biological parents. Talking about it, Sen said, "I told her that I don't know if they have names of biological parents in there, but that information is rightfully hers. I didn't want to give her the wrong information and break her heart. She asked me, 'Why do you want me to go and find out?' I said, 'I'm not saying go find out, I'm saying you have a right to know. She gave it a moment's pause and said, 'No, I don't want to find out.'"

Sushmita's last Bollywood film is No Problem which released in the year 2010. After that, in 2014, she did a Bengali film. Post that, the actor took a backseat from film to be there for Alisah, whom she adopted in 2010. Talking about the same, Sushmita said, "I know that people say that your best years are your youthful years where you can do films and you look younger etc. I asked myself, 'If I don't do films right now and I focus on this, will I regret it? And if I choose to not be with Alisah and go do films, which one would I regret more?' It was a no-brainer for me."

She further said, "It's not just seeing their first step or first word, that I missed out for Renee. It's their personality development, to witness who they are becoming. I did not sponsor a child. I became a mother. There is a very big difference."

The former beauty queen also shared how her approach towards Renee was different than Alisah. She said, "I thought that I have to keep making money, keep paying the bills. My approach to motherhood with Renee was more like a father - the provider. I didn't have the time to be the provider and the nurturer because there was just so much work to do. I literally had her in a sack, with Chi-Chi (Govinda) and David Dhawan holding her on the sets, and I'm giving my shot! I worked like that because I wanted to stay close to her, the best I could."

Sushmita concluded by talking about Alisah, "I wanted to see her through her formative years. After she turns six, I can look back at work. If my career in films is done by then, so be it. I'll get into business or I'll do something else. But this, I cannot miss."

(Photos via Instagram)