Christina Applegate is back at “square one” after doctors told her she does not have multiple sclerosis.
The 54-year-old actress, who was diagnosed with MS in 2021, addressed the surprising development Tuesday on her “MeSsy” podcast with Jamie-Lynn Sigler.
“This may come as great news, but to me, I’m back at square one,” Applegate said while fighting back tears. “It’s hard to say that [my doctor] came into my room, and she said, ‘Congratulations, you don’t have MS.’”
“What does that moment feel like?” Sigler asked.
“I was, like, not happy at all,” Applegate admitted. “Everybody else was so happy … You don’t get misdiagnosed and then all of a sudden I’m better.”
“I haven’t gotten better, Jamie!” she continued. “If anything, I’ve gotten worse in some ways. So I’m back at square one that I don’t know what’s going on with me.”
Applegate said her doctors are now working to determine what has caused her ongoing health problems and why she was diagnosed with MS in the first place.
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“There’s a pretty damn high number of misdiagnoses with MS,” she said. “So this is not a rare occurrence. It’s clear now that they’re finding something different. Something else is going on.”
The actress also admitted that the news left her feeling confused and as if she had “let everybody down.”
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“It’s this weird feeling of like … I became this — you and I, the poster children for MS,” Applegate told Sigler. “And all that I did, everything I was doing. I had a reason. I had a f—ing reason as to why my day sucked every day.”
“And now I don’t have a reason, and it’s very unnerving, and it’s really confusing for me,” she added.
Applegate also opened up about the toll her chronic pain and mobility issues have taken on her mental health and career.
“I’ve gone through a great depression because of it,” she said through tears. “But you know, I lost everything. I lost my job. I lost — sorry. What do you say to someone who’s been living with this for six years? God, I’m so sorry, I get really emotional because it stopped my life.”
Applegate clarified that the change in her diagnosis has not changed her physical condition.
“I still have to use wheelchairs when I go to the doctor’s office,” she said. “I can’t walk from the car to the room. I’m still in this. Nothing magical happened when she said, ‘You don’t have MS.’ Nothing magical happened.”
Doctor Marwa Kaisey, associate professor with the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center department of neurology, said that MS misdiagnoses are actually “fairly common.”
“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,” Dr. Kaisey said on the podcast.
“Almost one in five of these people who’d been told they had MS, some for decades, didn’t actually have it. And a majority of them were on medication to treat their MS,” she added.
Applegate first revealed her MS diagnosis on X in 2021.
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“Hi friends. A few months ago I was diagnosed with MS,” she wrote at the time. “It’s been a strange journey. But I have been so supported by people that I know who also have this condition.”
“It’s been a tough road,” she continued. “But as we all know, the road keeps going. Unless some a–hole blocks it.”
The actress has been candid about how her health struggles have affected her life, including her ability to parent her 15-year-old daughter, Sadie, whom she shares with husband Martyn LeNoble.
“I want to take her [to school and activities]; it’s my favorite thing to do,” Applegate previously told People. “It’s the only time we have together by ourselves. I tell myself, ‘Just get her there safely and get home so you can get back into bed.’ And that’s what I do.”
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Applegate said her physical limitations have also made her more determined to be honest about her life.
“My life isn’t wrapped up with a bow,” she said. “People’s lives, sorry for lack of a better term, f—ing suck sometimes. So I’m being as honest and raw as I possibly can.”
During a previous episode of her “MeSsy” podcast, Applegate discussed how her health struggles have affected Sadie.
“She didn’t know this. It was like losing the mom she had to this f—ing thing,” Applegate said. “And the more she’s gotten older now, I think the more it’s hurting her.”
“Mommy can’t do all the things that she used to be able to do, and I see it in her eyes,” she added. “I see it.”