Adassa was bedridden & hardly able to speak, let alone sing, when she learned she booked the role of Dolores in ‘Encanto.’
Just a day after auditioning for the role of Dolores in Disney’s Encanto, Adassa found herself fighting for her life when her body was ravaged by a mysterious illness, possibly due to post-COVID complications. “I thought I was pregnant, I went to take a blood test and it was negative. They started checking to see what was the issue, and as I was there in the hospital, little by little, I wasn’t able to speak, I started slurring my words, and then my legs were falling asleep, I couldn’t move my arms. They couldn’t figure out what was going on,” the singer recalled on the HollywoodLife Podcast. “The night before, I was singing and rapping Hamilton in an audition, and now I can’t move my mouth.”
Doctors believed that Adassa could have been suffering from a stroke, but after running more tests, doing an MRI and a CT Scan, they still were unsure what was wrong. Due to COVID protocols, her husband was not allowed to come be with her, so the mother of seven made the decision to check out of the hospital and be with her family. “I said, ‘I just need to go home. I don’t want to die here, if this is what’s happening,” she recalled. A friend in the medical field suggested the singer go to Vanderbilt Hospital for further observation, but after being poked, prodded and told they didn’t know what was happening, Adassa returned home once again, unable to even “walk herself out” of the hospital.
“I wrote my will out. I kissed kids. I couldn’t hold them, which was the worst,” she emotionally revealed to HL. “I’ve been married to the same man for almost 25 years, but the way that he just loved me so deeply and without reservation during moments where I was just completely paralyzed in the shower and I couldn’t even move my feet. And he would lift me out naked and place me on the bed…”
Read the entire Hollywood Life article here.
