'Real Housewives of New York City' star Ramona Singer shared that she has Lyme disease through her Instagram Story on Wednesday.
Real Housewives of New York City star Ramona Singer shared that she has Lyme disease through her Instagram Story on Wednesday.
Singer, 63, revealed the news when she thanked her fellow RHONY star, 55-year-old Dorinda Medley, for her recommendation on supplements.
"Thank you, Dorinda," Singer says in the video, showing the supplements. "I was diagnosed, everyone, with Lyme disease today and Dorinda swears by this to help with my immunity. So, this will be on my way to a faster recovery."
ET spoke with Singer on Thursday, and she shared that back in mid-February, she felt like she had come down with a sinus infection or the flu. In preparation for filming the new season of RHONY, she went to see a new doctor that one of her friends recommended, who is a preventative internist. She was diagnosed with a sinus infection and she says that although the antibiotics worked immediately to clear up the infection, a few days later, she started feeling rundown again.
"My head was hurting, I was having trouble concentrating, I was feeling tired and I'm never tired!" she tells ET.
Singer went back to the doctor, who decided to run her blood work. She got the results on Wednesday and tested positive for Lyme disease.
"I wanted to burst out crying but thankfully we caught it early enough," she says.
Singer shares that she had been going to another doctor for nearly 20 years who had not been testing her for the disease.
"If you are in the tri-state area, you need to always get tested. Don't take anything for granted," she says.
Now, Singer is working on building up her immune system. She says that Lyme disease aside, she is very healthy and strong, which is one of the reasons she didn't know she had it in the first place.
"My whole goal in life is to be ageless," she says. "People are always telling me I look better now than I did when the show started. I may be in my 60s but I feel 35!"
Singer isn't the only one in her family battling the disease, which, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is transmitted to humans through the bite of infected black-legged ticks. Typical symptoms include fever, headache, fatigue, and a skin rash called erythema migrans. In October 2018, Singer told ET that her younger sister has Lyme disease. Singer was as an honorary speaker at the Global Lyme Alliance about her own sister's battle with the disease two years ago, and she tells ET that the irony isn’t lost on her that while she was advocating for awareness, she wasn’t getting tested herself.
"She was complaining about all kinds of pain eight years ago, to the point where she was having problems walking," she shared with ET at the time. "We finally come to our own conclusion that this must be Lyme disease, then she was tested for it. I've become a maven since then. I'm aggressive, so I started calling all my friends saying, 'My sister has Lyme disease, who do you know? Who can I call?' I was on a rampage to find the best doctor because even once you're diagnosed, some doctors don't know how to treat it or can't be bothered treating it."
"It's incredible in this day and age how ignorant people are and the tests aren't always foolproof," she added. "It's just a really scary disease and it's not black and white."
Other celebrities who suffer from Lyme disease include Justin Bieber, Shania Twain, Avril Lavigne as well as Yolanda and Bella Hadid. For more on Bieber's Lyme disease revelation in January, watch the video below:
-- Reporting by Amy Purnell
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