Decades ago, Kris Kristofferson began suffering from mysterious health problems. What’s worse is that Kris was misdiagnosed by his doctors and went years without proper treatment. The truth about Kris and what’s really wrong with him is shocking.
Kris is the songwriter behind legendary hits like “Me and Bobby McGee.” He was also a movie star next to famous leading ladies, including Barbra Streisand.
When Kris appeared at the Hollywood Bowl with Rosanne Cash in April 2023, his appearance was heartbreaking. Sources say it’s a miracle that Kris can still walk around, let alone perform in front of 17,000 people.
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There’s one side of the story of Kris’s serious health issues. Then there’s the real truth.
His world started crashing down in 2006 when he starred in a movie called Disappearances. The movie might not be well-remembered, but sources allege that something happened to Kris behind the scenes that changed his life forever. Kris’s wife, Lisa, believes that Kris got infected with Lyme Disease while filming in the backwoods of Vermont.
Lyme Disease is a crippling illness. Its online support community is called LymeDisease.org. In the fall of 2016, Kris and Lisa’s interview appeared on the Lyme Disease website.
Lisa described the many years that Kris had suffered from terrible symptoms that weren’t diagnosed properly. She told the interviewer, Dana Parish, that Kris had “massive, painful spasms all over his back and legs.” Lisa explained that Kris’s damaged nerve endings caused “golf-ball-sized, painful contractions.”
They tried everything from heat treatments, massage, and acupuncture to a cortisone shot in Kris’s spine and even an antidepressant to try and relieve his symptoms. Lisa said the worst symptoms dragged on, and Kris was unable to work because of the pain.
Kris Was Likely Bitten by an Infected Tick
She also explained how and why she believed this had happened to Kris. When Kris was shooting Disappearances, Lisa revealed that Kris had spent “six weeks in the woods” in remote Vermont, and “he was on the forest floor for much of the shoot.” Because Lyme Disease is contracted by humans from infected ticks, Kris would have been very exposed to these ticks in the forest during the making of the movie.
Shockingly, Lisa claimed that the doctors in Malibu, where they lived at the time, didn’t know enough about Lyme Disease, so he wasn’t correctly tested for Lyme Disease until 2016—an entire decade later.
Rolling Stone also interviewed Kris in 2016. According to Rolling Stone, Kris “couldn’t even remember what he was doing from one moment to the next.” Kris even started writing a song about it but then forgot about writing the song.
Lisa took Kris to doctor after doctor, and he was told the same things, but it wasn’t the real truth. Every doctor claimed that Kris’s memory loss was due to Alzheimer’s disease or, maybe, dementia since Kris had boxed and played football earlier in his life and got a few blows to his head.
Lisa revealed in the interview with Dana that Kris was told he had severe sleep apnea and a heart condition called “arrhythmia,” or an irregular heartbeat. Kris was prescribed a CPAP machine for his supposed condition, but Lisa said he refused to use the machine after one try. Kris also got a pacemaker for the heart condition, and Lisa said he took “so much Advil for headaches that he got anemic.”
She told Rolling Stone that Kris “was taking all these medications for things” he didn’t have. Lisa alleged that all those medications had side effects that also affected him.
Lisa Was Told To Say Goodbye
Kris has been through many serious health challenges in his life, and Rolling Stone described one shocking incident between Kris and Lisa outside an operating room. This happened in 1999, years before Kris allegedly got infected with Lyme Disease in Vermont. He had to undergo heart bypass surgery, and on his way to the operating room, the doctor made an unbelievable suggestion.
According to Kris, the doctor told him and Lisa “that this would be a good place to say goodbye.”
Lisa told the doctor: “I hope it’s not goodbye.”
But Kris said: “So what if it is?”
Thankfully, he made it through his heart bypass surgery.
By 2015, Lisa had grown frustrated with how badly Kris was doing. She told Dana: “After a year of iron supplements and seeing a hematologist, he just wasn’t healthy-looking.”
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So, Lisa took a drastic step. She booked an examination for Kris with Dr. Mark Filidei at the Whitaker Wellness Institute, and the results were truly shocking.
After examining Kris and watching the constant twitching of his forearm muscles, Dr. Filidei suspected that Kris had Lyme disease. Two blood tests later, he finally received a formal diagnosis in February 2016.
Lisa was even more shocked by what happened to Kris after he stopped taking other medications for Alzheimer’s and depression and started treatment for Lyme disease. She told Rolling Stone: “All of a sudden he was back,” although Lisa admitted: “There are still bad days.”
Kris Now Spends His Time Riding His Tractor
OK! Magazine updated us on Kris’s health in April 2023. Since the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020, Kris claimed he was “officially retired” and living with Lisa in Hawaii. In the OK! article, the writer claimed that Kris was living his “brave last days,” and he was still battling Lyme disease.
But Kris didn’t sound like he was done with living just yet. He told OK!: “I spend most of my time on my tractor, mowing the grass around there.” Kris called it his “therapy” and joked: “No one can mess with me on the tractor.”
Kris also recalled exciting times as a young man, like winning a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University in England. He said: “I got to get really involved in William Blake and Shakespeare.”
After studying at Oxford, Kris became a U.S. Army helicopter pilot. During his service in West Germany, Kris formed a band, but after six years in the military, he left the army for good. Kris told OK! that his parents were so angry about him quitting the army that they disowned him.
Kris also told a sad tale about his relationship with the legendary Janis Joplin. He said: “I guess Janis doing ‘Bobby McGee’ was one that moved me profoundly.” Kris confessed that he’d had a romantic relationship with Janis before she passed away.
The first time Kris heard Janis’s cover of ‘Bobby McGee,’ he said, “It blew me away.” But sadly, Janis was already gone.
Kris Has Chosen the Words on His Tombstone
Lisa is Kris’s third wife. He was married to Fran Beer and Rita Coolidge before that. He also has eight children.
During his Rolling Stone interview, Kris claimed: “I really have no anxiety about controlling my own life.” Kris also admitted to feeling lucky that his life had lasted for so long because he said: “I’ve done so many things that could have knocked me out of it.”
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Kris appears to believe in a higher power. He said, “I just always have the feeling that He knows what He’s doing. It’s been good so far, and it’ll probably continue to be.”
The OK! article claimed that Kris is more “realistic” about his current direction in life and already has “the words he wants for his tombstone.” The words are from an acclaimed song by Leonard Cohen called “Bird On a Wire.” It goes: “Like a bird on the wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried, in my way, to be free.”
