Watch: Jack Osbourne Shares Ozzy Osbourne Biopic Is Eyeing “Awesome” Leading Man
Jack Osbourne is still learning the tune of his health journey.
Over a decade after the reality TV star was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, he emphasized he has a “strange relationship” with the condition.
That’s because the symptoms of the autoimmune disease—which attacks nerve fibers and can cause numbness and mobility issues, according to the Mayo Clinic—hasn’t taken as large of a toll on his body as it has on others.
“If I’m being honest, part of me feels a bit like a fraud in a sense,” Osbourne told hosts Christina Applegate and Jamie-Lynn Sigler on the Nov. 3 episode of their MeSsy podcast, “because I’ll go to these MS events—I’ve had the disease, been diagnosed 14 years now, and I’ll see people who were diagnosed a year ago, and they’re in a much worse position and they’re having a much harder time.”
And while he said his MS does affect him, the 40-year-old—whose parents are Ozzy Osbourne and Sharon Osbourne—feels like an impostor because “it hasn’t stopped me and it hasn’t really slowed me down.”
Despite the insecurities he feels, Osbourne has learned to cope with the emotional side of living with MS following his diagnosis in 2012—three weeks before the birth of his and ex-wife Lisa Stelly’s daughter Pearl, now 14.
“I’ve always approached living with MS as I have to look at the fact that I have no control of how this thing is going to roll out in my body,” he explained, “but I do have control of how I’m choosing to treat it mentally to the best of my ability.”
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The Osbournes star added, “Yes, there is that depression side of things that does flare up and it’s like, ‘OK, let’s just go take that walk out into the forest and not come back.’ But I have to keep telling myself I have a choice in how I choose to suffer with this.”
For her part, Applegate—who recently revealed that she had been misdiagnosed after a public five-year battle with what doctors had originally told her was MS—supported Osbourne’s mixed emotions while adding levity to the situation.
“Talk about being a fraud. I don’t even have it anymore,” she quipped, before noting she’ll continue to be an advocate for those living with MS. “I’ll never leave this community. I’ve made so many lifelong friends and I care so deeply about everybody that we represent and that I represent. I’m still always going to be a part of it in one way or another.”
For more stars who have been candid about their harrowing health journeys, keep reading…
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