Christina Applegate continues to be transparent about her battle with multiple sclerosis, revealing how the disease manifests itself in her body.
“I have 30 lesions on my brain, like, herpes sores, basically. So sores all over my brain. My biggest one is behind my right eye, so my right eye hurts a lot,” the 52-year-old shared on the “Armchair Expert” podcast with Dax Shepard.
Applegate, who says the eye pain isn’t currently impairing her vision, says the disease behaves differently in each person’s body. “Other people don’t even have [lesions] on their brain, they have like a couple on the spine.”
CHRISTINA APPLEGATE IGNORED EARLY MS SYMPTOMS: ‘I DIDN’T PAY ATTENTION’
Christina Applegate shared the ways in which MS affects her mobility and rudimentary functions. (Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Netflix)
Mobility issues, Applegate explained, are common among those fighting MS. “My hand starts to go weird and then I’ll get a seizure-y feeling sometimes in my brain, but not all the time,” she added of additional side effects.
“You can’t overcome it. People go like, ‘But why don’t you exercise?’ Because I can’t,” she admits. “It hurts. The second my feet hit my carpet in the morning and they’re hurting as bad as they do every single day, then I go, ‘F— it. I’m just gonna lay back in bed.'”
“And then I’m being the worst MS-er. We should be stretching. We should be trying to walk for five minutes,” she told Shepard. “I beat myself up about that, and then I’ll have a day where I’m not as bad, and I’m like, ‘Oh! I can do a couple things.’ Then I’m down for four days. So it’s a b—-…She’s a c—.”
Christina Applegate, using a cane, walks the red carpet with her daughter, Sadie. (Amy Sussman/WireImage/Getty Images)
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“This is a disease forever for us,” Applegate stated. “We’re prolonging life with these [B-cell] treatments… Doesn’t mean I’m going to be around in 10 years… I don’t know. So that’s the scary thing about MS. There is no end game.”
Having MS is “the worst tattoo,” Applegate stated. “It sucks. I’m not gonna sit here and like, some people go like, ‘Oh my god, cancer was the best thing that ever happened to me!’ And I’m like, ‘Uhh, then you had a pretty s—-y life,'” Applegate joked. “This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. In my entire life. I hate it so much. I’m so mad about it.”
Christina Applegate, who is extremely transparent about the lows of MS, wishes she’d been more honest when she was battling breast cancer in 2008. (Phillip Faraone/Variety via Getty Images)
Applegate has fought and overcome cancer as well. “When I had breast cancer at 36 years old, I went out and I was the good girl talking about, ‘Oh, I love my new boobs!’ That are all scarred and f—ed up. What was I thinking?” Applegate asked. “My first interview was with Robin Roberts when I had cancer and you know, I’m sitting there lying my a– off about how I felt.”
The actress admitted that after the interview, she “fell into the wall and sobbed ’cause it was a lie. Everything I was saying was a freaking lie. It was me trying to convince myself of something, and I think that did no service to anyone,” she said.
“Yes, I started a foundation right away. Yes, I did all the things I had to do. And we raised millions of dollars for women to get MRIs who were at high risk. Yes, we did a good thing, but at the back of it, I was taking off my bra and crying every night, and I wish that I had said that,” Applegate admitted.
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Christina Applegate received a standing ovation when she attended the Emmy Awards in January. (Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images)
Applegate recently disclosed the symptoms she initially ignored before being formally diagnosed with MS in 2021. Prior to being told she had the disease, Applegate remembers feeling a tingling sensation while filming the final season of her Netflix series, “Dead to Me.”
“My symptoms had started in the early part of 2021, and it was, like, literally just tingling on my toes. 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 explained on “Good Morning America,” in another interview with Robin Roberts. “So I had to tell everybody, because I needed help.”
Christina Applegate believes she had undiagnosed MS during the first season of “Dead to Me,” which premiered in 2019. (John Salangsang/Variety/Penske Media via Getty Images)
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Applegate believes she had likely been suffering from the disease for much longer, but explained how she’d ignored other symptoms. “I probably had it for many, many years,” she told Roberts. “Probably six or seven years.”
“I noticed, especially the first season [of ‘Dead to Me’], we’d be shooting and I would like, buckle. Like my leg would buckle. I really just kind of put it off as being tired. Or ‘I’m dehydrated’ or ‘It’s the weather,'” Applegate noted. “And then nothing would happen for like, months. And I didn’t pay attention.”
However, she eventually knew she had to seek medical help. “But when it hit this hard, I had to pay attention,” Applegate said.