While Tisha—who shares sons Xen, 22, and Ezekiel, 13 with ex Duane Martin—initially tried to continue on as usual, she decided to go see a doctor after noticing lesions on her neck and arms, and a particularly scary moment on set.
“I was doing a scene and it’s hard for me to watch this scene—I had to sing ‘Ease on Down the Road,'” she explained. “I could see after the song that I was panicked in my eyes. Like, ‘I can’t breathe.'”
After a trip to her primary care physician, she was referred to a pulmonologist who diagnosed her with stage one sarcoidosis. As she recalled, “He said, ‘you have four stages you can’t let it get worse.'”
However, after giving birth to her second son, her disease became stage two. And despite the setback, the Little Shop of Horrors star was inspired by the late Bernie Mac, who suffered from stage four of the disease before his 2008 death, to focus on taking care of herself.
