Sarah Hyland is opening up about her health struggles.
Joining “Modern Family” co-star Julie Bowen on the “Quitters” podcast, Hyland looked back at her second kidney transplant and how exhaustion from her kidney dysplasia made her forget shooting certain episodes.
“I’m well,” Hyland said of what she currently feels. “Everything’s stable. I haven’t left the house in a very long time right now, but everything is stable as of now.”
“There are some episodes of ‘Modern Family’ where I do not remember filming because I was asleep,” she said. “Dead-ass asleep. The episode where Haley asked [Luke for] money and he’s like, ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got it on ice.’ It’s in the freezer or something. The entire episode I was asleep.”
“You have to be a certain level of sick in order to receive a transplant. I was reaching that certain level of sick,” she said prior to her first transplant. “I was not able to be awake for eight hours at a time. I was so exhausted.”
Hyland would be asleep on set and right before they would call “action” she would walk on set, say her lines, and then go back to sleep.
Bowen also recalled how much pain Hyland was in.
“I will never forget ‘What’s The Plan, Phil?’ Griffith Park,” Bowen said. “It was cold. Wearing a Haley special — like a Vegas skirt. The sun had set… She’s a small girl to begin with and she had kidney issues.”
They needed one more take so Bowen went to see whether Hyland could do one more round. Bowen said Hyland got up “like a robot” to do the scene. “She [was] in a lot of pain, but you’d always turn it on when you needed to take care of business.”
“I never really said no,” Hyland said.
Bowen added, “You never really said no until you were in the hospital.”
READ MORE: Sarah Hyland Reveals Why She Waited 3 Months To Have Sex With Fiancé Wells Adams
After her body rejected the first kidney donor and she was on dialysis three times a week, Hyland said she started to have suicidal thoughts.
“What do I do?’ That’s where I felt suicidal. I would avoid going into [organ] rejection and being on dialysis at all costs,” Hyland said. “Just energetically I was like, ‘This is just hard for me to do anymore. And it would just be easier for everyone else, too.'”
“When you have grown up your entire life having health issues and always being pain, you have to learn how to have thick skin, put on a show… otherwise you’re just going to be looked at as a really weak and pathetic and sad person,” she said. “I don’t like to victimize myself. I don’t like other people to victimize me. I had almost 27 years of putting on a show, whether it was on Broadway or in my family living room.”
Hyland came forward with her mental health journey in 2019 and is since doing a lot better with a successful second transplant.
The Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention, Depression Hurts and Kids Help Phone 1-800-668-6868 all offer ways of getting help if you, or someone you know, may be suffering from mental health issues.
