Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagicSelena Gomez is living a much healthier life after receiving a kidney transplant earlier this year. But the singer, who suffers from lupus, says she’s “not really proud of” how she handled her illness at first.
“I would get fevers, headaches. I would get fatigue. But I always just kept going,” she told the Today show’s Savannah Guthrie in part two of her NBC News interview. “I kind of ignored it, to be honest, because it wasn’t something that maybe really I wanted to accept.”
Selena added, “I don’t think I made the right decisions. Because I didn’t accept it. And that’s extremely selfish, and at the same time, really just unnecessary. I’m not really proud of that.”
She finally took time off last year to deal with the mental side effects of her illness.
“I went away to a facility. I took some time off. I needed to get my mind right, be healthy,” she said. “I removed myself from everyone in my life.”
Her best friend and eventual kidney donor, Francia Raisa, said they went six months without speaking and she learned a “huge lesson” in friendship and trust from their time apart.
Now, they’re forever connected, thanks to Francia’s selfless donation.
“I don’t want people to think it’s a sad thing that I went through this with Francia or with anything in my life,” Selena said. “I think all of the stuff that I went through made me and defined everything that I am right now. It’s a really beautiful thing and I have to remind myself of that. It’s not a negative experience.”
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