Christina Applegate Reveals She Was Misdiagnosed With MS

Christina Applegate is searching for answers about her health. On Oct. 20, the actor returned to her MeSsy podcast, where she and her co-host Jamie-Lynn Sigler open up about their journeys with multiple sclerosis. However, she revealed that she took a seven-month hiatus to process that she had been misdiagnosed with MS, over five years after receiving the diagnosis.

Speaking through tears, Applegate recalled going to a doctor's appointment where she was screened with “new technology that had come out.” Her doctor “came into my room and she said, ‘Congratulations! You don’t have MS.’” However, the results only gave her more questions. “This may come as great news, but, to me, it comes as I’m back at square one,” she explained.

While her loved ones took the prognosis well, Applegate noted that she’s still experiencing the same symptoms. “You don’t get misdiagnosed, and then all of a sudden I’m better. I haven’t gotten better,” she said. “I’ve gotten worse, in some ways. I don’t know what’s going on with me. That’s going to be an online investigation my doctors are going to get into to find out what’s been happening since 2021. Why did this happen? I have every symptom of someone with MS.”

Applegate noted that “there are many things that mirror MS,” leading to “a pretty damn high number of misdiagnoses” as a result. The ladies brought on a professional, Dr. Marwa Kaisey, to confirm this phenomenon, saying no single test can detect the condition. “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,” the doctor explained.

After her 2021 diagnosis, Applegate became an avid advocate for people struggling with MS, even founding an online platform where survivors can share their experiences. Now, she’s not sure how to move forward with friends and allies who were diagnosed with the disease, including Sigler.

“It’s weird because I feel like I let everybody down,” she said. “It’s this weird feeling because I became this — you and I, the poster children for MS. And everything I was doing. I had a reason. I had a f*cking 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.”

However, Sigler assured her that everything she did to help others hasn’t gone to waste, noting that she “didn't mislead anyone” or do anything wrong.