Selena Gomez's Kidney Transplant: A Timeline of Her Struggles With Lupus
Selena Gomez has always been open with her fans about her health struggles, so it came as no surprise when she shared with her Instagram followers that she had undergone a kidney transplant.
The 25-year-old singer-actress revealed on Thursday that her longtime pal, Francia Raisa, donated her kidney. "I found out I needed to get a kidney transplant due to my lupus and was recovering," she captioned a photo of her and Raisa holding hands following the procedure. "It was what I needed to do for my overall health."
According to the National Kidney Foundation, lupus can cause "inflammation of the small blood vessels that filter wastes in your kidney -- and sometimes the kidney itself -- by attacking like they would attack a disease."
News of Gomez's transplant comes just a few weeks after she revealed during a Q&A with Good Time director Josh Safdie and producer Sebastian Bear-McClard that she had been on "bed rest."
MORE: Everything to Know About Selena Gomez's Kidney Donor Francia Raisa
Here's a look back at the times Gomez has spoken about her battle with lupus.
Checking Into Rehab
In the May 2016 issue of GQ magazine, Gomez talked about her time at a rehab facility in Wickenburg, Arizona, in 2014. "I got diagnosed with lupus. My mom had a very public miscarriage," she recalled. "So, I had to cancel [13 dates on] my [Stars Dance] tour. I needed time to just be OK."
Lupus Diagnosis
Gomez first opened up about having lupus in a 2015 interview with Billboard magazine, over a year after she checked herself into rehab.
"I was diagnosed with lupus, and I’ve been through chemotherapy," she disclosed. "That’s what my break was really about. I could've had a stroke."
Gomez said the speculation around her recovery did take a toll on her. "I wanted so badly to say, 'You guys have no idea. I'm in chemotherapy. You're a**holes,'" she exclaimed. "I locked myself away until I was confident and comfortable again."
Living With Lupus
Not long after her 2015 Billboard interview, Gomez went on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and further explained her diagnosis and what she went through after first learning of her illness.
"I think it was just very complicated because I didn't understand and then that was something that I did want to keep private until my whole life suddenly wasn't private," she told the talk show host. "So, it was my moment. I'm really honestly able to relate to people and I get it."
"It's kind of one of those situations," she added. "You just have to take care of yourself."
Checking Back Into Rehab
In August 2016, Gomez canceled the remaining dates of her Revival World Tour and checked into a treatment facility in Tennessee, citing that she was having anxiety, panic attacks and depression as a result of her lupus.
"Tours are a really lonely place for me. My self-esteem was shot," she shared in the April issue of Vogue magazine. "I started to have panic attacks right before getting onstage, or right after leaving the stage. Basically I felt I wasn’t good enough, wasn’t capable."
The "Bad Liar" singer added that going to rehab was "one of the hardest things I’ve done, but it was the best thing I’ve done.”
Intense Therapy
Gomez also revealed in the Vogue interview that she sees a therapist five times a week for Dialectical Behavior Therapy, a treatment, according to to the magazine, that was "first developed for patients with borderline personality disorder that is now more widely used to treat conditions like depression."
“DBT has completely changed my life,” she insisted. “I wish more people would talk about therapy."
In her recent Instagram post, Gomez revealed that she got the kidney transplant when she was "laying low part of the summer."
Back in April, the former Disney star spoke with ET about how she was doing personally, and appeared to be in good spirits. "You know, my personal life, and my family and my friends, I'm just, I'm in a really happy place," she gushed. "It's been good."
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