Watch: Joe Manganiello Spent 7 Years Anticipating His Death During Debilitating Autoimmune Disease Battle
Joe Manganiello is pulling back the curtain on his health battle.
Days after releasing his memoir Bloodlines, in which he detailed his seven-year battle with an autoimmune disease, the Magic Mike actor shared some shocking photos of himself taken during one of his hospital stays.
“In the days following the amputation of my large intestine, my weight began to plummet,” Manganiello wrote on Instagram Oct. 15. “I would ultimately lose a total of 60 lbs during the two weeks following the surgery. If you zoom in, you can see the top of my first ostomy bag creeping up over the sheets.”
The 49-year-old sits shirtless in a chair next to a hospital bed while hooked up to various IVs in the first photo he shared. He also included a graphic image of his “abdomen after the reconnection/take down surgery” and a close-up of his face documenting one of the “skin conditions” he said he “was plagued with” during his health battle.
“My skin, an immune organ,” he explained, “was stricken with just about every condition known to man, usually in combination.”
Manganiello had previously detailed his health woes while promoting Bloodlines, sharing that they began shortly after his marriage to Sofía Vergara in 2015. (The pair ultimately divorced in 2023, with him detailing the breakdown of their marriage in the book.)
It was then that he began experiencing ulcers on his digestive tract, causing severe abdominal pain which left him unable to walk, in addition to fevers, blistering rashes, headaches and crippling fatigue.
Joe Manganiello/Instagram
As he told People in an interview published Oct. 7, “I was getting sicker and sicker.”
But, as Manganiello, who is now engaged to Caitlin O’Connor, explained, doctors had no answers and began giving him litany of tests and prescription medications, including drugs normally used to treat Crohn’s and colitis.
“None of them worked on me,” he shared, noting he was forced to turn to hydrocodone pills, fentanyl patches and marijuana to mitigate his pain, which caused complicated feelings about his 13 years of sobriety. “I didn’t feel like I deserved to say that I was sober, [but] I had to put the pain and the condition first.”
Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images
Manganiello—who also detailed his serious mental health struggles as a result of his physical ones—said that it wasn’t until he met with a shaman in Santa Monica, who said generational trauma was to blame, that the True Blood alum felt any significant change.
“Whatever chains there were to the past suffering of my ancestors, they were completely broken,” he explained. “There’s not an ounce of fear in me about moving forward with my life.”
For more stars who have candidly detailed their own health battles, keep reading…
Amanda Edwards/Getty Images for SAG-AFTRA Foundation
Sean Zanni/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images
Jason Mendez/Getty Images
Amy Sussman/Getty Images for Vanity Fair
Jason LaVeris/WireImage
Paul Zimmerman/Shutterstock
Instagram/Suki Waterhouse
Steph Chambers/NWSL via Getty Images
Chris Haston/WBTV via Getty Images
Photo by David Becker/Getty Images
Todd Owyoung/NBC via Getty Images
Instagram / Christy Carlson Romano
Todd Owyoung/NBC via Getty Images
Dave Sandford/NHLI via Getty Images
Instagram / Justin Bieber
Joe Maher/Getty Images
Trae Patton/NBCU Photo Bank
ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images
Chris Haston/WBTV via Getty Images
Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images for Vanity Fair





