Christina Applegate Says She Was Misdiagnosed With Multiple Sclerosis: ‘It’s Very Confusing’
"You don't get misdiagnosed and then all of the sudden I'm better," actress says on MeSsy podcast
Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images/Critics Choice Association
Five years after Christina Applegate‘s doctors told her that she had multiple sclerosis, they’re now telling her she never had the autoimmune disorder. The actress revealed the news on MeSsy, her MS-themed podcast she hosts with Jamie Lynn Sigler, who has MS, since March 2024. She said she’s in a “state of shock” over the news, which she calls a “mindfuck.” What’s most frustrating for Applegate, though, is that she’s still has symptoms that no longer have an explanation and that she feels she accidentally misrepresented herself to those with the disorder, according to People.
On back-to-back episodes of the podcast, Applegate explained that she took a leave of absence from the podcast in March while she processed her doctor’s news. “She came into my room and said, ‘Congratulations, you don’t have MS,'” Applegate said. “I was, like, not happy at all. Everybody else was so happy.”
Dr. Marwa Kaisey, who works in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s neurology department, spoke on the podcast saying misdiagnoses are “fairly common” since there is no single binary MS test saying whether a patient definitely has or doesn’t have the disorder. “Almost one in five of these people who’d been told they had MS, some for decades, didn’t actually have it,” the physician said. “And a majority of them were on medication to treat their MS.”
Multiple sclerosis damages the protective cover around one’s nerves, according to the Cleveland Clinic. It can cause “muscle weakness, vision changes, numbness and memory issues.”
“It’s weird because I feel like I let everybody down,” Applegate said on one of the episodes. “It’s this weird feeling because I became this — you [Sigler] and I, the poster children for MS. And everything I was doing. I had a reason. I had a fucking 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 very confusing for me.” She described her present state as “the same game with a different name.”
Applegate said she feels like her symptoms have gotten worse since she learned the news. “You don’t get misdiagnosed and then all of the sudden I’m better,” Applegate said. She added that she expects her doctors to investigate how and why she was misdiagnosed.
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“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.”
Applegate has spoken at length about MS, saying in 2024 that she believed she had been suffering from the disorder at least six or seven years prior to the 2021 diagnosis. “I noticed, especially the first season [of the Netflix series Dead to Me], we’d be shooting, and my leg would buckle,” she said at the time on Good Morning America. “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.”
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Applegate announced her retirement from acting on camera in 2023, saying then that she would focus on voice work. She teared up onstage in 2024 when she received a standing ovation at the Emmys while presenting an award. “You’re totally shaming me by standing up!” Applegate said, clinging to Anthony Anderson’s arm.
“I’ve gone through a great depression because of [the misdiagnosis],” Applegate said on MeSsy. “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.”
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