Christina Applegate will never forget the day she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
Applegate, 52, remembers “feeling sick for months” before she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), a chronic disease in which the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks nerves in the brain and spinal cord.
“Is it okay for you to talk about when you got your diagnosis and what that day was like?” James Corden asked the star of SiriusXM’s “Married with Children.” “My Life with James Corden”
“Yeah, it was the worst,” Applegate said matter-of-factly, detailing the various symptoms she felt before her diagnosis.
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Christina Applegate remembered the day she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. (Matt Winkelmeyer/Critics Association via Getty Images)
“For years and years, I had some weird symptoms… balance problems, speech problems,” Applegate recalled. “My hands would shake, and I remember playing tennis — I was playing two or three times a week — and my knees would start hurting.”
At the time, the “Dead to Me” actress attributed her symptoms to “dehydration” or the temperatures outside being “too hot.”
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“For years and years I had these strange symptoms… balance problems, speech problems. My hands would shake. I remember playing tennis – two or three times a week – and my knees started hurting.”
“When my mom was diagnosed with cancer in January 2021, just before Christmas, I noticed my toes were numb but I ignored it and carried on hiking and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s, hmmm, it’s a weird muscle spasm,'” she said.
Applegate, who now uses a cane for support, recalled that before she was diagnosed with MS, she had trouble climbing stairs. (Amy Sussman/WireImage/Getty Images)
“Things just got crazier and crazier, and next thing I knew we were starting filming the final season of Dead to Me, and by that point I was like, ‘Guys, I can’t even get up the stairs to my trailer.'”
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Given her symptoms, Applegate scheduled several tests, along with an MRI scan of her brain. She remembers being at work when her doctor called and said she needed to confirm the results in an emergency telehealth call.
“I remember telling them, ‘I’ve got to go. I’ve got to go home and be on set at 7 o’clock,’ and they were like, ‘Well, you’ve got to do like one more scene,’ and I was just like, ‘No way. I’ve got to go home,'” Applegate said.
Christina Applegate believes she was not diagnosed with MS during the first season of Dead to Me, which premiered in 2019. (John Saransan/Variety/Penske Media via Getty Images)
When she got home, she said, “I opened Zoom and he was there and he just looked at me and said, ‘I’m sorry.'”
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“I said, ‘What do you mean?’ and he said, ‘Here’s a picture of your brain. Sorry,’ and I had like 30 lesions in my brain and I said, ‘No, don’t say this, don’t say this,'” she said. “I had to call the production team and I said, ‘Guys, this is MS,’ and they said, ‘Okay, we’re stopping filming this week.'”
Applegate added, “And that was it. And then we were figuring out how to shoot it and all that. So yeah, it’s done. It took a long time, but it’s done. But yeah, I remember that moment like it was yesterday.”
Applegate rose to fame in the late 1980s as one of the stars of the sitcom “Married with Children.” (Aaron Rapoport/Corbis/Getty Images)
She first announced her diagnosis on X in 2021. “Hi everyone. A few months ago I was diagnosed with MS. It’s been a strange journey,” she said. “Newscaster” Star “But I’ve had so much support from people I know who have the same illness. It’s been a tough journey, but as we all know, the journey continues — unless some idiot stops it.”
In another post, she added: “As one of my friends who has MS said, ‘We wake up and take action as instructed,’ and that’s what I’m doing.”
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