Christina Applegate Recalls the Day She Found Out She Had MS
Christina Applegate is looking back at the day she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS).
If you didn’t know, the 52-year-old Emmy-winning actress was diagnosed with the chronic disease back in 2021 and has very open over the years about her battle.
While appearing on the SiriusXM show This Life of Mine with James Corden, Christina detailed the day she found out she had MS.
Keep reading to find out more…“It sucked. I was feeling so ill for so many months,” Christina started as host James Corden asked if had been ignoring” her symptoms before the diagnosis.
“For years and years and years,” Christina responded, before revealing that she had been experiencing symptoms including balance issues, speech issues, shaking hands and at times her knee “would go out” during tennis.
However, Christina said that she always found excuses to explain what she was going through.
“It was like, ‘Oh, I’m dehydrated. It’s too hot out. Whatever.’ January of 2021, when my mom was diagnosed right before Christmas with cancer, I noticed that my toes got numb and I ignored it and I still was hiking and then I’d be like, ‘Whoa, that’s, hmm. That’s a weird muscle spasm,’” Christina recalled before deciding to finally get tested.
Christina had just started production on the final season of Dead to Me when things “started to get weirder and weirder.”
“By this time I was like, ‘You guys, I can’t even walk up the steps to my trailer.’ After some tests, they did an MRI in my brain and it was a Monday and we were at work and my doctor said, ‘I really need to get on a Zoom with you to go over your MRI results,’” Christina recalled. “And I remember saying to them, ‘I have to leave. I have to go home and be there at seven,’ and they’re like, ‘Well, we have like one more scene to do,’ and I just said, ‘I can’t. I gotta go home.’”
After leaving set, Christina spoke with her doctor, who shared the diagnosis with her.
“I opened up my Zoom and there he was and he just looked at me and he goes, ‘I’m so sorry,’ and I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ and he goes, ‘Here’s a picture of your brain. Sorry,’ and there’s like 30 lesions all over my brain and I went, ‘No, please don’t tell me this. Please don’t tell me this,’” she said.
Christina then started to cry as she shared how the Dead to Me cast and crew reacted to her diagnosis.
“I had to call production. I said, ‘You guys, it’s f–king MS,’ and they’re like, ‘Okay, we’re shutting down for the week.’ That was it, and then we were just trying to figure out how to film and stuff and we did,” Christina explained. “I mean, we finished it. It took us a long time, but we finished it. But yeah, I remember that moment like it was yesterday.”
Later in the interview, Christina shared how reality TV has helped her cope with the disease.
“Anyone who knows me well knows that it’s on 24/7 in my room ’cause I don’t leave my room very often. I know that sounds really depressing, but it’s kind of like I just need to sleep sometimes,” Christina said.
“Give me any of it. Give me a Vanderpump, give me a Below Deck, give me a housewife. Even give me like Kitchen Nightmares with Gordon Ramsey. I’ll watch like nine seasons of that in like two days,” Christina shared. “I love watching, the imperfections of real people really like, wow. Those people exist. I love that. That’s why I love reality TV because they freak me out that they walk this earth acting like that.”
If you missed it, Christina‘s 13-year-old daughter Sadie recently revealed her own health battle.