It’s been a strange year for Dancing With the Stars, and not the least of the oddities was contestant Tamar Braxton dropping out of the competition in November due to medical problems. Now she’s opened up about how much worse her condition actually was than what was thought at the time.
Appearing on today’s episode of The Real, for which she is a host, Tamar Braxton revealed to everyone that beyond dealing with the awfulness of blood clots in both of her lungs, she is also suffering from a condition called thoracic outlet syndrome. It causes problems with blood vessels and veins in the neck and chest area due to compression, and Braxton’s case meant she had to get one of her ribs surgically removed in order to relieve the pressure, in a procedure that took over two hours. It has to be depressing to go from focusing on choreography to focusing on recovery.
During the ninth week of Dancing with the Stars, the R&B star had to leave the dress rehearsal for a trip to the emergency room, although she did return later in the night for her team-up dance, with her dress rehearsal footage used as her contemporary dance. It was initially thought to be pneumonia, but that was soon changed after pulmonary embolisms were found in her lungs. She actually brought her vascular surgeon and her cardiologist onto The Real with her to talk about the surgery and her overall health.
You can watch a clip from the show below, where Dr. Allan Tulloch talks about how why her problem got worse.
And as People puts it, Braxton could also have the same thing happen to her on the other side of her body, where that rib is also not in top shape. Seems like the easy diagnosis would be to not take on any more reality series where physical exertion is a huge part of the process. That’s pretty much how I live my life.
Aside from Braxton’s story, Season 21 was also notable for being the first time in Dancing with the Stars’ history that Len Goodman wasn’t one of the judges. (He’ll be back for Season 22, though.) It was also the first time host Tom Bergeron missed an episode, as he was tending to family matters. And then you had Kim Zolciak-Biermann’s mini-stroke knocking her out of the competition and winner Bindi Irwin not getting paid initially because she had to prove that her father Steve Irwin was dead.
Crazy stuff, but at least Braxton is feeling better.
