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Christina Applegate she broke down in tears as she revealed that she had been misdiagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
“[My doctor] she came into my room and said, ‘Congratulations, you don’t have MS,'” Applegate, 54, said when she returned to the “MeSsY” podcast on Tuesday, Oct. 20. “I wasn’t, like, happy at all. Everyone else was so happy. “
Applegate and cohost Jamie Lynn Siglerwho has been living with MS since 2002, with them Dr. Marwa Kaysey for a discussion of the misattribution of MS. Kaisey, an associate professor with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s neurology department, said being misdiagnosed is “very common” because “we don’t have one single test for MS.”
“It’s not like we have something like a pregnancy test that says, ‘Yes, you have it. No, you don’t.’ It’s a list of criteria,” she continued. “Almost one in five of those people who were told they had MS, some for decades, didn’t have it. And most of them were on medication to treat their MS.”
Applegate, who began to cry during the program, indicated that she was still struggling with symptoms that are now unexplained.
“You don’t get a wrong diagnosis and then all of a sudden I’m better,” she explained. “I haven’t gotten better, Jamie! If anything, I’ve gotten worse. So I’m back at square one where I don’t know what’s going on with me.
Elsewhere in the podcast, Applegate reflected on going through “major depression” after the health announcement.
“But I lost everything. I lost my job. I lost – I’m sorry. What do you say to someone who has been living with this for six years – God, I’m so sorry – because it stopped my life,” she said. “I still have to use a wheelchair when I go to the doctor’s office. I can’t walk from the car to the room. I’m still here. Nothing magical happened when she said, ‘You don’t have MS.’ Nothing magical happened.”
Applegate remains in a “state of shock” with the serious “mindf***” diagnosis.
“It’s weird because I feel like I let everyone down,” she said. “It’s a strange feeling because I became like this – you and me, the poster children for MS. And everything I was doing. I had a reason. I had a *** reason why my day was so bad every day. And now I don’t have a reason and it’s very boring and it’s very confusing to me.”
Applegate went public with her MS diagnosis in 2021 and has been open about her health battle ever since. Earlier this year, Sigler, 45, announced that their podcast would be taking a “short break” while the pair focused on launching their books. (Sigler released her book, And So It Is: A Memoir of Acceptance and Hope, in May, while Applegate’s memoir, You With the Sad Eyes, was published in March.)
Christina Applegate, Selma Blair, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Jack Osbourne and many other celebrities have opened up about dealing with multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disease. Applegate revealed in August 2021 that she had been diagnosed with the condition. “Hi friends. A few months ago, I was diagnosed with MS,” wrote the Married… With Children alum via X […]
News broke in April that Applegate had been hospitalized a month earlier and was later released.
“I have no idea if she’s in the hospital or what her medical treatments are,” a spokesperson for Applegate told us at the time. “She has had a long history of complex medical conditions that she has been very open about, as seen in her memoir and on her podcast.
Applegate, for her part, sent out a message in April after seeing support from fans.
“I have constant health issues, but I’m a strong chick and I’m getting stronger and better every day,” Applegate wrote via Instagram at the time. “I’m taking a moment to focus on my health, but I’ll be back with more to say soon enough.”
