Hailey Bieber is getting real about her mental health after going through some health scares last year.
In case you don’t recall, the 26-year-old model was hospitalized in March after experiencing stroke-like symptoms caused by a blood clot in her brain. Hailey previously explained:
“I felt this really weird sensation that traveled down my arm from my shoulder all the way down to my finger tips, and it made my finger tips feel really numb and weird. And Justin was like, ‘Are you ok?’ And I just didn’t respond because I wasn’t sure and then he asked me again, and when I went to respond, I couldn’t speak. The right side of my face started drooping. I couldn’t get a sentence out. Everything was coming out, not even jumbled, just like couldn’t get any of the words out. So obviously immediately I thought I was having a stroke, like a full-blown stroke.”
When she was at the hospital, doctors soon diagnosed Hailey with patent foramen ovale or PFO – which is a small opening in the heart that never closed after birth. She underwent surgery to repair the hole in her heart. And while the problem was fixed, the wife of Justin Bieber admittedly is still living with the trauma of her stroke months later. During an appearance on The Run-Through with Vogue podcast on Thursday, Hailey opened up about how her mental health has been impacted by the “very scary and very jarring” experience. She said on the episode:
“It was definitely the scariest thing I’ve ever gone through.”
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The Rhode founder, who had been in Palm Springs during her health scare, explained that while she has returned to the city multiple times since then, the area is “very triggering” for her:
“Even the first couple of times coming back here after was a little bit of a strange triggering kind of feeling for me because you just remember exactly how everything happened in that moment. But I think the bright side for me is that it led me to find out I had this hole in my heart.”
Nevertheless, she said that she was mainly scared her condition would “happen again” whenever she returned to Palm Springs:
“I struggled with a lot of anxiety after. I struggled with a little bit of PTSD [Post Traumatic Stress Disorder] of just like the fear of maybe it was gonna happen again. It was just a feeling that I was, like, I never want to experience that ever again. I mean, it was so terrifying, so jarring, so discombobulating in every single way that you could imagine.”
On top of that, Hailey confessed while she was “open to talking about the experience if it could help somebody else,” it was “really hard to talk about” the mini-stroke because it brought back “the feelings” of what happened to her:
“Even the Youtube video that I had made for my Youtube channel was hard for me. It brings back the feelings for me of going through that experience. It gets easier, and easier with time to be able to talk about it.”
Although Hailey is “just now starting to come out of that kind of fight or flight feeling of being nervous about something bad happening again,” she has been enjoying her life again. And ultimately, the social media personality is thankful to be okay now:
“I’m just really grateful that I was able to have had amazing doctors, and nurses, and people that helped me get to the bottom of what actually happened. … I look back at it and it could’ve been so much worse. So many worse things could have happened in that moment.”
2022 was definitely a tough time for Hailey! Not only did she deal with a mini-stroke, but she also had an ovarian cyst that was “the size of an apple.” Plus, her hubby was diagnosed with Ramsay Hunt syndrome, which caused partial facial paralysis. Oof! Here’s hoping things are calmer for the Bieber family this year!
Reactions to Hailey’s candid discussion, Perezcious readers? Let us know in the comments below.
[Image via MEGA/WENN]
