Prior to learning of her multiple sclerosis misdiagnosis, Christina Applegate wrote about her severe symptoms and her doctor’s health conclusion in her memoir, “You with the Sad Eyes,” released in March.
The actress, 54, was told she had multiple sclerosis (MS), a disease in which the immune system attacks the central nervous system, in 2021 while filming the third and final season of Netflix’s dark comedy “Dead to Me.” Applegate revealed her misdiagnosis in an Oct. 20 episode of her "MeSsY" podcast, hosted with Jamie-Lynn Sigler, 45, (who was diagnosed with MS at 20). Approximately 1 in 5 who receive an MS diagnosis are misdiagnosed, Cedars-Sinai has found.
In her book, Applegate explained that she’d “been having some numbness in my peripherals
for a while, and I’d taken a raft of tests to try to get to the bottom of it.” On an evening Zoom, she connected with her neurologist, who “looked forlorn.” He apologized and then showed her images of her brain.
“To this day, his words reverberate in my head and my heart, my soul, my stomach, my solar plexus − everywhere,” Applegate wrote. “‘Here are the lesions,’ he said. ‘There are about thirty.’”
Applegate asked for clarification, and her doctor then told her she had MS. “I didn’t cry,” Applegate recalled. “Instead, in shock, I said, ‘Okay, thank you very much.’ I closed the laptop.”
“Eventually, my disability was showing up so much on camera that Netflix wondered if perhaps we needed to shut the show down − they could see my pain in the dailies and didn’t want to torture me,” Applegate added.
She said "Dead to Me" creator Liz Feldman suggested ending the series early, but Applegate protested: “We have a story to tell. We have an obligation to these two characters.”
Her decline came over a matter of months, she told USA TODAY in February.
"I was hiking and running and playing tennis in January 2021. By June of 2021, I couldn't walk anymore,” she said during the interview. “My daughter [Sadie, whom she shares with husband Martyn LeNoble] saw a parent that she loved dancing with and playing tennis with and hiking with, and doing all this stuff. And now she just sees this person in a bed, and it depresses her beyond anything. And she's 15 f------ years old, man."
At the time, Applegate said she and her daughter were making the most of the moments they’re still able to share together, like morning drives with The Beatles, The Cure or Marcy Playground blasting.
"When she gets home from school or whatever, we hang out and we talk and we laugh, and it's the best," she said. "She's my dedication to life."
Christina Applegate symptoms: Star detailed pain, discomfort before receiving MS diagnosis
In her memoir, Applegate detailed her agonizing symptoms.
“My knees feel like I have bricks attached to them, heavy and painful. My skin feels like it’s got third-degree, fourth-degree, fifth-degree burns," she wrote. "Something is constantly stabbing at my ankles. When I put my feet down on the ground when I wake up, it feels as if the floor is made of needles, yet I can’t feel them because my feet are completely numb. Somehow it manages to be both things at once."
Christina Applegate news: MS diagnosis was not accurate
Applegate broke down in tears during the Oct. 20 podcast episode, as she recounted how her doctor recently told her, "Congratulations, you don't have MS."
Dr. Marwa Kaisey, an associate professor with the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center department of neurology who joined Applegate and Sigler for the second episode of the podcast, said MS misdiagnoses are "fairly common" because there's no "single test for MS."
"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," Kaisey explained.
And though the “Married... with Children” star said that everyone in her life was relieved, her reaction to the news was quite the opposite, with Applegate admitting that she was "not happy at all."
"You don't get misdiagnosed and then all of a sudden I'm better," she shared. "I haven't gotten better, Jamie. If anything, I've gotten worse in some ways. So I'm back at square one, that I don't know what's going on with me."
Contributing: Brendan Morrow
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What Christina Applegate wrote about her severe symptoms, MS diagnosis in memoir
