Pitch Perfect and Isn’t It Romantic star Adam Devine has recalled the horrifying moment doctors told him he was dying – but luckily they got it wrong
Pitch Perfect star Adam Devine has revealed doctors told him he was ‘dying’ a month before he became a dad for the first time. The 41-year-old welcomed his first child, a son named Beau, with his actress wife Chloe Bridges, 33, last February.
Leading up to this, the comedian and actor – who also starred opposite Rebel Wilson in the Netflix hit Isn’t It Romantic – shared how he had been experiencing ‘spasms’ over his body and been in ‘so much pain’, which had turned his life into a ‘nightmare.’
Just before baby Beau was born, doctors told Adam they thought he might have Stiff Person Syndrome (SPS) – the same illness singer Celine Dion was recently diagnosed with. The rare neurological disorder causes stiffness and muscle spasms in the body and can eventually lead to death, with the average life expectancy once diagnosed between six and 28 years. There is currently no cure, but there are treatments that can help manage symptoms and improve sufferers quality of life.
Speaking on the In Depth podcast, Adam told host Graham Bensinger that he was preparing to not be around for his son as doctors were convinced he had it – but it turned out they had made a mistake and his symptoms were actually a result of the injuries he sustained as a kid when he was hit by a cement truck.
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Speaking of the misdiagnosis, Adam shared: “They told me I was dying. Literally within this last year they told me that I had this disease called Stiff Person Syndrome. That’s when your muscles get so tight that you then you can no longer walk you can no longer move, then your heart will stop beating, because your heart is a muscle and it gets too tight to beat and then you die.
“The average life expectancy is six years for someone that has it. And they told me that I have that, literally a month before my son Beau was born. So I’m like ‘Oh great now I’m going to die, he’s going to be six years old he’s only going to know a crippled father.'”
After seeing doctors several times, Adam said they kept changing their minds over whether he had the life-changing illness. At the point where his symptoms got so bad he “couldn’t really move anymore”, they sent him to the doctor that actually coined the phrase ‘Stiff Person Syndrome’.
Adam recalled how the doctor then told him some good news and said: “This is from your accident from when you were a child, the spasms are a little unexplainable but it could just be you got so tight that your body doesn’t know what to do with it so you’re you’re misfiring a little bit.”
Now Adam believes that getting physically fit during the pandemic could have triggered the painful reactions throughout his body. He said: “I think I just got so tight and so tightly wound, and my body has all these things that are a little wonky and a little wrong with it, that I just sort of snapped. I think I’m still dealing with it, but it’s been three years now.”
Speaking about the accident he had when he was 11 years old previously, Adam told how he was crossing the road with his bike when he was hit by a cement truck. He thought his pal had told him the coast was clear, when he was actually telling him to hurry up so he wouldn’t get hit. The actor has since had to have 25 surgeries and still feels the impact of his injuries today. He said: “They say the reason I lived was the bike took the hit first. I still slid 500 feet. Picked me up under the first two wheels and then spit me out.”
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