Christina Applegate Reveals Shocking New Health Update Following Months-Long Hospitalization
Following her four-month hospitalization, Christina Applegate reveals a shocking new health update: she was misdiagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS)
During her return to her and Jamie Lynn Sigler’s MeSsy podcast on Oct. 20, the Married… With Children alum discussed the situation in two back-to-back episodes. She was first diagnosed with the neurological disorder in August 2021.
“[My doctor] came into my room and said, ‘Congratulations, you don’t have MS,’” the actress explained. “I was, like, not happy at all. Everybody else was so happy.”
While appearing as a guest on the podcast, Dr. Marwa Kaisey, an associate professor in the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center Department of Neurology, revealed that MS misdiagnoses are “fairly common.”
“We don’t have one single test for MS,” she pointed out. “It’s not like we have something like a pregnancy test that says, ‘Yes. You have it.’ ‘No. You don’t have it.’ It’s a list of criteria.”
Kaisey also shared that nearly 20 percent of patients diagnosed with MS actually don’t have the disease.
“Almost one in five of these people who’d been told they had MS, some for decades, didn’t actually have it,” she revealed. “And a majority of them were on medication to treat their MS.”
Although she was misdiagnosed, Applegate said she’s still struggling with symptoms. “You don’t get misdiagnosed and then all of the sudden I’m better,” she noted. “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.”
The actress then stated, “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?”
As she continued to discuss the misdiagnosis, Applegate admitted she was struggling mentally from the situation.
“I’ve gone through a great depression because of it. But I lost everything. I lost my job. I lost — I’m sorry,” she emotionally shared. “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.”
She also admitted to feeling like she let everyone in the MS community down because of the misdiagnosis.
“It’s this weird feeling because I became this — you and I, the poster children for MS. And everything I was doing.” Applegate pointed out. “I had a reason. I had a f—ing 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.”
The actress went on to reveal that she is still in a “state of shock” after finding out she was misdiagnosed, referring to the situation as a “mindf—.” She also added that she took some time off from the podcast to “process” the situation and deal with “some health stuff.”
