Christina Applegate, who has candidly shared raw details about her journey with multiple sclerosis for years, revealed on Monday her doctor says she doesn’t have the autoimmune disease and was misdiagnosed.
“I’m back at square one where I don’t know what’s going on with me,” the actor said on the latest edition of her podcast, MeSsy, which she co-hosts with Jamie-Lynn Sigler, who has been public about her own battle with MS.
“She came into my room, and she said, ‘Congratulations, you don’t have MS’. I was not happy at all, everybody else was so happy, crying,” Applegate said.
Sigler then cut in and agreed: “When you first told me my first words were, ‘You can dance again’ because that’s just where my head goes.”
Applegate said the misdiagnosis presented further challenges. “You don’t get misdiagnosed and suddenly, I’m better. I haven’t gotten better, Jamie, if anything I have gotten worse, so I’m back at square one,” she said.
Applegate, a veteran performer who came to fame on the sitcom Married With Children and was most recently seen in the Netflix series Dead To Me, publicly announced in 2021 that she was diagnosed with the disorder that causes the immune system to attack the cells in the central nervous system.
In August, Applegate was discharged from the hospital after an almost four-month stay, according to Page Six.
Her journey with the autoimmune disease was also detailed in her memoir You With the Sad Eyes, which was published earlier this year.
On Monday’s podcast, Applegate revealed that despite the misdiagnosis, she still has “every symptom of someone with MS”, and added: “I still have to use wheelchairs when I go to the doctor’s office. I can’t walk from the car to the room.”
There is no single test for MS, and a diagnosis usually involves ruling out other causes. It can take years and seeing multiple doctors before one puts the clues together.
Applegate said the news had put her in an odd place since she and Sigler had become prominent advocates for people with MS.
“It’s weird because I feel like I let everybody down,” she said. “It’s very unnerving, and it’s really confusing for me.”
Most autoimmune diseases, especially in adults, aren’t caused by a specific gene defect. Instead, various genes that affect immune functions can make people susceptible. Scientists say it then takes an “environmental” trigger, such as an infection, smoking or pollutants, to set the disease in motion.
In her memoir, Applegate is candid about unpredictable symptoms that have forced her to use diapers and scoot downstairs on her backside.
“My life has in some ways shrunk to the size of my California king,” she writes in her book.
The Emmy-award winning actor also revealed in her memoir that had been diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer at age 36 during routine checks, and underwent a double mastectomy before being declared cancer-free.
The experience left her soul-searching, and she poured her energy into breast cancer charity Right Action for Women, founded in 2008.
“It was my way of coping with how brokenhearted I was to lose my breasts,” Applegate wrote in her memoir, according to the New York Post.
“To this day, I feel emotionally and physically mangled by what I went through, but the organisation mitigates the terrible loss I felt and feel.”
With AP
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