Elizabeth Taylor underwent at least twenty major operations, including surgery to remove a brain tumor in 1997, and nearly died from a bout with pneumonia in 1990. Elizabeth Taylor named herself “a survivor, a living example of what individuals can go through and make it through.” After a bout of congestive heart failure (CHF) in 2009, Elizabeth Taylor had surgery to repair a leaking heart valve.

“Congestive heart failure by no means really goes away completely,” says doctor Gina Lundberg, medical director with the Heart Center For Ladies Heart and Vascular Institute at St. Joseph’s Hospital of Atlanta, who was not associated with Elizabeth Taylor’s treatment. “There are ways to handle it, but only for so long, unless of course it’s caught early. Valves do not stay forever, but you do not wish to wait around too long.”

CHF is really a condition in which the heart cannot pump enough oxygenated blood to satisfy the requirements of the body’s other organs. Heart failure interferes with the kidneys’ ability to get rid of excess sodium and waste from the body. The body retains more fluids – which results in swelling with the ankles and legs. Fluid also collects in the lungs, resulting in shortness of breath.

Common causes include heart valve illness, past rheumatic fever or other infections, and hypertension (high blood pressure).

“The heart is a lot like a rubber band,” says Lundberg. “It will keep snapping back to a point, but eventually it loses its elasticity, and gets to a point exactly where it’s so enlarged it can’t pump blood any longer.”

Elizabeth Taylor’s illness started early in life. Elizabeth Taylor did her fifth film, National Velvet, when she was 12. During production, Elizabeth Taylor fell off a horse. That marked the beginning of a very long string of health issues. The resulting back injury continued to bother her.

But later in life, Elizabeth Taylor was also battling a degenerative spine situation, a type of scoliosis, which eventually robbed Elizabeth Taylor of her mobility. The disease limited her to a wheelchair during her later years, seriously twisting her back and creating pain. Elizabeth Taylor had surgery in 2004 to correct seven compression fractures in her spine, telling WMagazine that year, “My body’s a real mess.”

“Her situation (scoliosis) is painful most of the time from the get-go,” says physician Khaled Kebaish, a spinal reconstructive surgeon at Johns Hopkins, who is not associated with Elizabeth Taylor’s therapy. “It severely limits mobility and it will cause wear and tear on the spine, leading to nerve impingement in the damaged areas and in the sciatica.”

Kebaish states her form of scoliosis can result in other well being complications. One of which, says Lundberg, might have already been dealing with the unending discomfort.

“Constant discomfort leads to depression, and depression can result in heart disease in ladies,” Lundberg adds.

Elizabeth Taylor in 1983 acknowledged a 35-year obsession with sleeping pills and discomfort killers. Elizabeth Taylor was treated for alcohol and drug abuse at the Betty Ford Clinic in Rancho Mirage, Calif.

Hardships also pervaded her life in some other methods. Elizabeth Taylor loved and lost many individuals close to her, including movie producer Michael Todd, her first husband, inside a 1958 plane crash.

“Elizabeth Taylor experienced a lot of mental discomfort,” states psychologist and Temple University (Philadephia) professor Frank Farley.

As Elizabeth Taylor herself said, “I’ve already been through it all, baby, I’m Mother Courage.”

But, Farley claims, “She had resilience. Many people are diminished or destroyed by discomfort, failure or loss; others rebound. They’ve the discomfort just like the rest of us have, but they maintain rising to the challenges. Life ought to be totally lived. She’s an instance of that.”

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