-
Adam DeVine revealed on the In Depth With Graham Bensinger podcast that it has recently “been a nightmare” dealing with apparent complications from a childhood accident involving a cement truck
-
DeVine previously told Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast in 2019 that, at age 11, he nearly had both legs amputated after he was hit by the truck — which he said “broke everything from my waist down besides my right femur”
-
After initially being diagnosed with stiff-person syndrome, a physician later clarified to DeVine that the spasms he still experiences are a result of his childhood incident with the cement truck
Adam DeVine is revealing how a childhood accident involving a cement truck still affects his health decades later.
On Wednesday, April 2, the Righteous Gemstones star revealed on the In Depth With Graham Bensinger podcast that it has recently “been a nightmare” dealing with apparent complications from the accident.
Devine, 41, has previously detailed his near-fatal childhood accident while crossing the street, telling Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast in 2019 that, at age 11, he nearly had both legs amputated after he was hit by a cement truck — which he said, “Broke everything from my waist down besides my right femur.”
Now, speaking with podcast host Bensinger, Devine revealed that doctors “don’t really know” why he’s been having “spasms all over” in recent years.
Related: How Comedy Helped Adam Devine After He Was Hit by a Cement Truck & Underwent 26 Surgeries
Noel Vasquez/Getty Images Adam Devine
“For a while, they told me I was dying. Literally within this last year they told me that,” Devine recalled. “They told me I had this disease called stiff-person syndrome. And that’s when your muscles get so tight that you then you can no longer walk. You can no longer move, then your heart will stop beating, because your heart is a muscle and it gets too tight to beat and then you die.”
“And so essentially, the average life expectancy is six years for someone that has that. And they told me that I have that literally a month before my son Beau was born,” Devine, who shares his 1-year-old son with wife, Chloe Bridges, added. “And so I’m like, ‘Oh great, now I’m gonna die.’ “
Devine then revealed that he soon discovered he actually didn’t have the rare autoimmune and neurological disorder which Céline Dion was previously diagnosed with.
“And then six months go by … and it wasn’t getting much better and I could only walk a few blocks before I’d get so tight that I couldn’t really move anymore,” Devine said. “And they’re like, ‘We actually do think you have it. Go see the guy that coined the phrase stiff-person syndrome, he’s the expert in the field.’ And so I went and saw him.”
“And he’s like, ‘You don’t have it. You do not have it.’ He’s like, ‘This is from your accident, from when you were a child. The spasms are a little unexplainable, but it could just be you got so tight that your body doesn’t know what to do with it. So you’re misfiring a little bit,'” Devine recalled of the expert’s opinion.
Related: Adam Devine Says ‘Every Day Is a New Adventure’ Now That He’s a Dad: ‘It’s the Best’ (Exclusive)
As the Pitch Perfect star explained, he also got heavily into cycling and CrossFit during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that he believes he may be dealing with the effects of that.
“I think I just got so tight and so tightly wound, and my body has all these things that are a little wonky and a little wrong with it, that I just sort of snapped,” Devine said. “I’m still dealing with it. It’s been three years now.”
The actor added that, as of now, it still “hurts to sit for too long,” “stand for too long” and “walk for too long” — meaning he has to “foam roll” two to three times each day. Furthermore, he received hip surgeries in 2024 and has also undergone stem cell treatment, as DeVine shared on the podcast.
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
DeVine previously detailed the childhood accident in 2019. At the time, he said he and a friend were “going to the convenience store.”
“My buddy was across the street and yelled, ‘Come on!’ And I took that as ‘the coast is clear, come on,’” DeVine said on Armchair Expert. “I grew up in the suburbs so new houses were being built every day. Three cement trucks were going down the hill and two were coming down at the exact same time.”
“And so after the third one passed going up the hill on my side of the street I walk out with my bicycle and was hit by the cement truck coming down the other side,” he continued. “Taken under the wheel, spit out. Broke everything from my waist down besides my right femur and then crushed everything from the knees down and took it all my skin off.”
As he recalled at the time, DeVine was in a medically-induced coma for two weeks and underwent several surgeries — 26 specifically, which took place between the 6th grade and his first year of high school.
“I think that’s kind of why I got into comedy. After that I couldn’t do anything, anytime anyone would make fun of me, my dad was like, ‘You can’t get into fights so you gotta punch them back with your words, think of some funny things to say back to them,'” he said in 2019.
Read the original article on People
