“True Blood” star Joe Manganiello almost died of a mysterious, undiagnosable autoimmune disease that plagued him for seven years, the actor reveals in a new memoir.
His is a tale of “chronic pain, a life-saving organ amputation, existential crisis, and a prolonged fight for survival” that stymied doctors, according to the writeup of “Bloodlines,” out next Tuesday.
“I can’t believe I’m alive,” the “Magic Mike” hunk, 49, told People. “I feel like I was reborn.”
Manganiello’s health started unraveling soon after his 2015 marriage to “Modern Family” actress Sofia Vergara. Ultimately the marriage did too, in no small part to Manganiello’s health struggles, he recounted.
First came excruciating, crippling abdominal pain caused by ulcerations in his digestive tract. Fevers, blistering rashes, headaches and fatigue became constant. In 2016, part of his intestines were removed in emergency surgery.
Doctors never did figure out exactly what was ailing him, other than to classify it as an autoimmune issue. Manganiello praised his doctors when he first announced his memoir in June, acknowledging that the illness was confounding.
The actor found himself having to choose between sobriety and pain management, taking hydrocodone, fentanyl patches and marijuana to mitigate the constant pain. They were tough pills to swallow after 13 years sober, but “I had to put the pain and the condition first,” Manganiello told People.
His health struggles crept into the public eye when he was forced to pull out of co-hosting a charity event with Vergara in 2016, citing appendicitis.
Manganiello’s quest for healing — and survival itself — took him deep into the past and inside himself on an “unorthodox path” that led him to “shamans, pagan rituals, ancient myths, long lost family records, and the rebirth of his own spirituality” and unmasked generational trauma as a major contributor. His great-grandmother lost nine children to genocide in Armenia, and his grandmother had lupus, another autoimmune condition, People reported. Confronting all that broke the chains binding him to “the past suffering of my ancestors” and left Manganiello 100% fearless “about moving forward with my life,” he told People.
Today Manganiello is healthy. He and Vergara divorced in 2023, and he began dating actress Caitlin O’Connor soon after. They are now engaged.