Celebrity4 min(s) read
Christina Applegate revealed tiny symptom she first noticed as sign of MS as actress announces she was misdiagnosed
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Christina Applegate previously opened up about a tiny symptom that led to her MS diagnosis - as doctors have now told her she was misdiagnosed.
Applegate, 54, has been living with what she believed was MS (multiple sclerosis) since 2021, after noticing symptoms had been creeping on for around seven years beforehand.
The actress, who is known for roles in shows including Dead to Me and Married... with Children, previously opened up about the "tiny" symptoms that led to her being diagnosed with the lifelong condition that impacts the central nervous system.
During a previous interview with Good Morning America, the actress opened up about the signs she noticed early on, alongside her long-time friend Jamie-Lynn Sigler - who is also battling the condition.
“I probably had [MS] for six or seven years, I think,” Applegate says. “I noticed, especially the first season [of Dead to Me], we’d be shooting and my leg would buckle. I really just put it off as being tired, or I’m dehydrated, or it’s the weather.
"Then nothing would happen for months, and I didn’t pay attention. But when it hit this hard, I had to pay attention."
Watch the interview below:
The actress became emotional when she revealed that by the end of shooting the season, she relied on a wheelchair to bring her to set.
"My symptoms had started in the early part of 2021, and it was, like, literally just tingling on my toes," Applegate told Robin Roberts.
"And by the time we started shooting in the summer of that same year, I was being brought to set in a wheelchair. Like, I couldn’t walk that far."
She also stated that even though she's in "excruciating pain", she's "used to it now."
However, she has since revealed that doctors have now told her that she doesn't in fact have MS at all.
Returning to her MeSsy podcast after a seven-month absence, Applegate told co-host Jamie Lynn Sigler that she has taken time out from her podcast to process the news from her doctor that she doesn’t actually have MS.
Applegate explained: “She [the doctor] came into my room and said, ‘Congratulations, you don’t have MS.'
"I was, like, not happy at all. Everybody else was so happy.”
Dr Marwa Kaiser, from the neurology department at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, joined them on the show to explain that MS misdiagnoses are pretty common because there simply isn’t "one single test for MS".
She continued: "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 revealed that around 20 percent of people diagnosed with MS don't have it, explaining: "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."
Applegate revealed that the news was far from a comfort, as she was still experiencing the symptoms, just without a cause.
She explained: "You don’t get misdiagnosed and then all of the sudden I’m better. 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, and that’s going to be an online investigation that my doctors are going to be getting into just to find out what has been going on since 2021, why did this happen?”
In the second instalment of the podcast, she continued: "I’ve gone through a great depression because of it. But I lost everything. I lost my job. I lost - I’m sorry.
"What do you say to someone who’s been living with this for six years - God, I’m so sorry - because it stopped my life.
"I still have to use wheelchairs when I go to the doctor’s office. 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.”