Christina Applegate says she 'lost everything' to an illness she has now been told she never had. The actress, 54, broke down in tears on the 20 October episode of her MeSsy podcast as she revealed that her doctor has ruled out multiple sclerosis, a neurological condition she has lived with publicly for more than five years.
'I lost everything. I lost my job,' Applegate said, adding that living with the condition 'stopped my life.' The MS misdiagnosis has not brought the relief many would expect, because she says her symptoms are exactly what they were before.
Christina Applegate's MS Misdiagnosis
Applegate returned to MeSsy after a seven-month break, during which her co-host Jamie-Lynn Sigler hosted the show alone. She told listeners that her doctor came into her room and said: 'Congratulations, you don't have MS.' Applegate was 'not happy at all,' she said, while 'everybody else was so happy.'
Her health has not improved. She still uses a wheelchair at the doctor's office and cannot walk from the car to the room. 'I have every symptom of someone with MS. Every single one,' she said. 'If anything, I've gotten worse in some ways.'
She announced her diagnosis in August 2021, while filming the third and final series of Dead to Me, and for five years it explained why every day was so hard. 'I had a f***ing reason as to why my day sucked every day,' she said. 'And now I don't have a reason.' She told listeners she is 'back at square one,' called the situation 'very unnerving' and 'really confusing,' and asked: 'Why did this happen?'
How Medical Re-Evaluation Overturned Her MS Diagnosis
Doubts first surfaced when her treatment stopped and her cell count stayed exactly the same. Her doctors began what she called 'kind of a study into my diagnosis,' and new technology helped them look at her case again. 'It's clear now that they're finding something different,' she said. 'Something else is going on.' She still does not know what.
Dr Marwa Kaisey, a neurologist at Cedars-Sinai, joined the second episode to explain why mistakes happen. 'We don't have one single test for MS,' she said. Unlike a pregnancy test, which gives a clear yes or no, MS is diagnosed using 'a list of criteria.'
Kaisey added that misdiagnosis is fairly common. Almost one in five people told they had MS, some for decades, did not actually have it, and most of them were taking medication for the condition.
MS Advocacy and Unanswered Questions
Applegate and Sigler became the 'poster children for MS,' she told her co-host, and that role now sits uneasily with her. 'It's weird because I feel like I let everybody down,' she said. She spent five years speaking up for other people living with the illness, and she now has to do it without a diagnosis of her own.
Her doctors are now working to find out what has been behind her symptoms since 2021. Until they do, Christina Applegate's MS misdiagnosis has taken away her label and left her with the same body, the same daily struggle, and no name for either.
