Christina Applegate has shared that she was misdiagnosed and that she does not have multiple sclerosis.
She shared the news on the podcast MeSsy, which she hosts with Jaime Lynn Sigler and where the two actors talk about living with the chronic autoimmune disease.
Applegate said she had taken time away from the show to process finding out that she does not have MS, People magazine reported.
The show went on a break on March 31 as Applegate was hospitalized with what, at the time, were complications from MS, the publication said. Sigler returned solo with special guests on April 21 as Applegate took a break.
“She came into my room and said, ‘Congratulations, you don’t have MS,’ ” Applegate tearfully shared. “I was, like, not happy at all. Everybody else was so happy.”
So how did the misdiagnosis happen?
Dr. Marwa Kaisey explained that misdiagnosis is “fairly common” since there is not a single test for the disease.
The associate professor from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s Department of Neurology said, “We don’t have one 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 said it is as high as 20% of MS diagnoses are wrong.
“Almost one in five of these people who’d been told they had MS, some for decades, didn’t actually have it. And a majority of them were on medication to treat their MS,” Kaisey explained.
The “Married with Children” actress was diagnosed with MS in 2021, People reported. She retired from acting after the end of her series “Dead to Me” the next year, according to Variety.
Applegate said that while she does not have MS, the debilitating symptoms are still there.
“You don’t get misdiagnosed and then all of the sudden I’m better,” Applegate said. “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. 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?”
She told Sigler that she has also been dealing with depression because of the news.
“I’ve gone through a great depression because of it. 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. 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,” Applegate said.
She also said she feels like she let people down after building a community of those who have MS.
In the end, she said her health challenge is “the same game with a different name.”
What is MS?
The Mayo Clinic says multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune system disease that causes the breakdown of the protective covering of nerves, causing numbness, weakness, difficulty walking, and vision changes, among other symptoms.
The body’s immune system attacks the nerve fiber covers called myelin, interrupting the communication between the brain and the rest of the body. It can eventually cause permanent damage to nerve fibers.
There is no cure, but treatments can help a person recover from attacks and manage symptoms, the Mayo Clinic said.
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