It's been a scary year for the Scott family but none of us have known until now. Fans were shocked when JD Scott and his fiancé, Annalee, announced that for the past 14 months, JD has been suffering from a mysterious illness, and still doesn't know exactly what it is. Scott is the older brother of the famous renovation twins Jonathan and Drew Scott who have the show Property Brothers.
Scott and Belle posted an almost half hour video on Instagram, which went into detail about what Scott has been battling.
"We would like to share something important with the people who follow us," the post says. "I apologize for the length of this video but there is very personal and intimate information that it was time to talk about. Human beings are delicate creatures and I found out just how delicate this last year as I struggled against something very serious. It has been a race for answers and a frustrating journey when it seems like everything is against you, even time. Warning, this video is long and quite emotional at times. Please bear with me when I can't find the words or a voice to talk about some of the more painful memories."
It was then that Scott opened up about his battle.
“You may have noticed over the last, just over a year, that I do a lot of content from the office and from home. The reason why that is, I've been quite sick for the last 14 months. It started around May and there had been some symptoms before that, but ended up in the hospital because things got really bad, and that began the whole process,” he explained. “That event was so bad, I thought I was dying. I was preparing all my estate and everything for Annalee.”
The event was so bad, Scott wrote a letter to his soon-to-be-wife.
"Instead of going to the hospital, he typed out an email to me, telling me to take care of everything in case this was it," said Belle.
A series of tests were run while he was in the hospital. Scott went through MRIs, as well as tests for lupus, autoimmune disease, and brain aneurysms. Nothing was becoming any more clear, and Scott's symptoms were starting to hinder his every day life.
“I was extremely sensitive to heat — anything over about 70 degrees, I would suddenly feel like my skin is on fire, I would pass out, and I would be out of commission sometimes for days," Scott recalled. “Walking too much would bring on the symptoms. Heat would bring on the symptoms. So I was very limited in what I could do. But as long as I was within an area that I could control, I could actually do things.”
"After months and months, they determined it wasn’t lupus and that it was a brain aneurysm. They then decided I had two brain aneurysms,” Scott said.
Scott was put on some medication for something called a nummular headache, which caused the renovation expert to feel a "crawling" sensation on his skull.
"What he gave me helped with that specifically, it didn’t help with the other symptoms,” Scott admitted.
While Scott and Belle were getting their house renovated on the show Forever Home, they met a functional doctor named Scott Jacobson, who uses homeopathic and natural approaches to medicine. They asked him for help and got Scott help right away.
“I was doing makeup on the show, and learned there was a Functional Doctor there, which was something I was actually looking into,” Belle explained.
"He did so many tests, I had about 25 vials of blood taken, but he discovered there was pretty severe infection,” Scott recalled. “He said it’s possible that it has been there for quite a while, and that would have been setting off all these responses. My body was trying to fight it.”
It was only about a month ago that Scott was able to get a somewhat firm diagnosis. Thanks to medication and an elimination diet, he's finally starting to feel like himself again.
“I have gotten better. I felt, at times recently, like I did before this all started and I haven’t felt like that in ages,” he said, but warned that “it’s not all better by any stretch, but this sort of thing does take time.”
While it's great that Scott is on the mend, he and Belle are still left hurt after some of their friends made rude comments during this whole ordeal, even calling Scott "dramatic."
“A lot of people just haven’t checked in and they know how bad it is. It’s felt kind of lonely,” explained Belle.
“Not having the friends that you normally have is not fun," Scott added.