Christina Applegate Speaks Out After Being Misdiagnosed With MS: ‘I’m Still in This. Nothing Magical Happened’

Christina Applegate returned to the MeSsy podcast on Tuesday (October 20) to share a shocking update on her health, revealing that she was misdiagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS).

In back-to-back new episodes of the popular podcast, which the Dead To Me star cohosts with Jamie-Lynn Sigler, an emotional Applegate explained why she’s been absent since March. She revealed that she’s been away processing the news that she doesn’t have MS, despite experiencing debilitating symptoms since 2021.

Speaking about an appointment with her doctor, a tearful Applegate shared, per People, “She came into my room and said, ‘Congratulations, you don’t have MS.’ I was, like, not happy at all. Everybody else was so happy.”

Doctor Marwa Kaisey, associate professor with the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center department of neurology, told Applegate and Sigler that MS misdiagnoses are “fairly common” because there isn’t “one single test” for 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,” she stated.

Applegate said the revelation didn’t change her physical condition. “You don’t get misdiagnosed and then all of the sudden I’m better,” she shared. “I haven’t gotten better, Jamie! If anything, I’ve gotten worse.”

The Anchorman actress said she’s “back at square one” trying to understand what is going on with her. “I’ve gone through a great depression because of it,” she added. “But I lost everything. I lost my job… I’m sorry. What do you say to someone who’s been living with this for six years… because it stopped my life.”

Applegate explained that she still needs a wheelchair and can’t walk from her car to the doctor’s office. “I’m still in this. Nothing magical happened when she said, ‘You don’t have MS.’ Nothing magical happened,” she continued.

She also admitted to feeling “weird” about the situation, like she “let everybody down.” Applegate told Sigler, who has lived with relapsing MS for nearly 25 years, “You and I [are] the poster children for MS. And everything I was doing, 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.”

Applegate said she is still in a “state of shock” over the misdiagnosis, referring to it as a “mindf***.” But she reiterated that nothing about her condition itself has changed, describing her health battles as “the same game with a different name.”