Ellen DeGeneres says she doesn’t know how she’s still standing as she looks out at the audience in a Netflix special. “I’m like a human sandcastle,” she says. “I might crumble in the shower. The audience chuckles. It’s a nice line. Beneath the humor, however, is something she is obviously still processing: a triple diagnosis she was given in her mid-sixties that no one, least of all herself, anticipated would manifest in such a way.
In her last stand-up special, For Your Approval, which aired in late 2024, DeGeneres revealed that she had been diagnosed with ADHD, OCD, and osteoporosis. There are three requirements. They are all unique. A bone density scan, a therapist’s office, or a conversation with her wife Portia de Rossi, which seemed to require very little time to confirm, were the various ways that each one came to be. When DeGeneres asked Portia about her OCD, she responded, “Yes, you do.” “Barely got that sentence out really.”
The first diagnosis was osteoporosis, which was made after she complained of severe pain to a doctor. She thought the ligament was torn. The MRI disagreed. The doctor diagnosed her with arthritis, but the bone scan showed something worse: complete osteoporosis, the kind that makes fractures a real risk rather than merely a theoretical one. According to the CDC, nearly one in five women over fifty have it, making it a common condition that somehow still carries a quiet stigma—the idea that failing bones is a personal embarrassment rather than a clear medical fact. A public health pamphlet would never have the same impact as DeGeneres discussing it candidly in front of a live audience on a Netflix stage.
It felt more difficult to watch the disclosures about mental health. DeGeneres spent decades without the vocabulary to describe what she was going through because she was raised in Christian Science, a religion that doesn’t really acknowledge illness or psychological conditions. She had always considered herself to be meticulous, well-organized, and detail-oriented. It took a therapist to diagnose it as OCD, one she sought out in part to deal with the public fallout from her talk show’s toxic workplace accusations. After being diagnosed with ADHD, she explained that the two disorders coexisted in a sort of unintentional balance: she would become fixated, lose focus, and then forget what she was fixated on. “It takes me all the way around to being well-adjusted,” she replied. That framing has a humorous and genuinely depressing quality.
It’s important to take a moment to discuss the other online rumor that DeGeneres was diagnosed with kuru, a rare and deadly prion disease that has historically been linked to ritual cannibalism in some Papua New Guinean communities. The assertion is untrue. Completely. It gained traction through social media posts and blogs that were close to tabloids, much like misinformation typically does by sounding just out of the ordinary enough to be intriguing. It has no medical foundation. It is not supported by any reliable reporting. However, enough people heard the rumor that it needed to be actively refuted.
It’s difficult not to find that depressing. This woman, who is in her mid-sixties, is taking the stage for what she claims will be her last public performance. She is being open about bone loss, mental health, and the challenges of aging in public, and a significant amount of the online discussion surrounding her health focused on a fictional prion disease. In most respects, the true story is more worthwhile and less dramatic.
There’s a sense that this was a more thoughtful exit than most celebrities manage after seeing how DeGeneres handled everything—the diagnoses, the jokes, the admission that she spent too many years caring what people thought. Not victorious, not resentful. Just someone who has finally made the decision to be honest about what growing older truly looks like on the inside.
