After a long wait, Joni Mitchell made her appearance at the 2024 Grammy Awards on February 4.
The 80-year-old singer has only appeared on stage several times since she suffered a brain aneurysm in 2015. She successfully brought home a gramophone for the Best Folk Album.
Aside from her comeback, her revelation about her "weird, incurable illness," Morgellons disease garnered attention from doctors.
What Is Joni Mitchell's Skin Disease?
In 2010, the "Both Sides Now" singer told the Los Angeles Times that she has the disease, which causes her to develop fibers in different colors that come out of her skin "like mushrooms." She added that the illness felt like it was something from outer space.
"I couldn't wear clothing. I couldn't leave my house for several years," she added in her 2014 memoir, "Joni Mitchell: In Her Own Words." "Sometimes it got so I'd have to crawl across the floor. My legs would cramp up, just like a polio spasm. It hit all of the places where I had polio."
However, medical professionals have since called it a "delusional" disease as they have yet to learn more about the syndrome and whether it exists at all, per the Daily Mail.
Per the media outlet, experts believed Mitchell was suffering from an allergic reaction and gave
"People with delusional parasitosis are very functional and rational except when it comes to this one issue," Dermatologist Jeffrey Meffert told Newsweek. "Many dermatologists would rather these patients never show up, because they don't feel they have the time to spend. No one knows how to deal with them."
According to The Independent, Morgellons disease was seemingly named in 2002 by Mary Leitao after rejecting a doctor's findings that her two-year-old son was suffering from delusions. At that time, her child had lesions on the inside of his lip.
She reportedly found the term in a letter by physician Sir Thomas Browne, who saw the same illness in children in the 17th century French.
Amid the questions surrounding the disease, Morgellons Research Foundation attempts to find effective treatment options and get more information about the diagnosis.
Mitchell also told The Star in 2013, "I'm not cured but I've found a helpful physician way outside the box. Western medicine says this doesn't even exist, it's a psychotic disease. It's not."
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