Christina Applegate shockingly revealed she was misdiagnosed with multiple sclerosis five years ago.
“[My doctor] came into my room and said, ‘Congratulations, you don’t have MS,’” Applegate, 54, recalled through tears on her “MeSsy” podcast Tuesday.
“I was, like, not happy at all. Everybody else was so happy.”
The actress explained that despite learning about the misdiagnosis, she still suffers from debilitating symptoms.
“You don’t get misdiagnosed and then all of the sudden, I’m better,” Applegate continued. “I haven’t gotten better. If anything, I’ve gotten worse.”
The “Married … With Children” alum heartbreakingly admitted that she’s “back at square one,” now having no idea where her health issues stem from.
“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?”
Applegate got emotional when she talked about how her MS diagnosis completely uprooted her life for the past five years.
“I’ve gone through a great depression because of it. I lost everything. I lost my job. What do you say to someone who’s been living with this for six years … It stopped my life. I still have to use wheelchairs when I go to the doctor’s office.”
Applegate continued, “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.”
The “Dead to Me” star also spoke candidly about how it felt to no longer be a part of the MS community she was once the “poster child” for.
“It’s weird because I feel like I let everybody down. It’s this weird feeling because I became this — you and I, the poster children for MS,” she told co-host Jamie Lynn Sigler, who was diagnosed with the disease in 2008.
One of the hardest parts for Applegate after learning of the diagnosis is that she no longer has something to pinpoint all of her struggles on.
“I had a reason. I had a f—king 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.”
She also said she’s still in a “state of shock” over the misdiagnosis, calling it a “mindf—k.”
The “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” star, who hadn’t appeared on the podcast since March, explained that she took a step back to fully “process” the misdiagnosis while also dealing with “some health stuff.” She had reportedly been in the hospital for months starting in the spring.
In Applegate’s two-part return to the podcast, she and Sigler had on Dr. Marwa Kaisey, a neurologist at Cedars-Sinai, to explain how the misdiagnosis occurred.
Shockingly, the professional said MS misdiagnoses are “fairly common” since “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.”
“Almost 1 in 5 of these people who’d been told they had MS, some for decades, didn’t actually have it,” Kaisey continued. “And a majority of them were on medication to treat their MS.”
Applegate — who has been candid about her health battle since 2021 — was reportedly discharged from the hospital last month after a stay that began in March.
While it remains unclear why she was admitted, her rep told Page Six at the time, “She’s had a long history of complicated medical conditions that she has been refreshingly open about.”
In April, without divulging details, the actress addressed the situation with fans. “Thank you for the outpouring of love and well wishes,” she wrote.
“Health issues are a constant for me, but I’m a strong chick and I’m getting stronger and better every day.”
The hospitalization was the latest medical challenge the “Bad Moms” star has faced in recent years.
In August 2025, she shared with “MeSsy” podcast listeners that a kidney infection had left her “screaming” and in the hospital with “so much pain.”
In a February interview with People, Applegate revealed she was generally confined to bed and still trying to take her 15-year-old daughter, Sadie LeNoble, to school, saying it’s her “favorite thing to do.”
“I tell myself, ‘Just get her there safely and get home so you can get back into bed.’ And that’s what I do,” she shared with the outlet.
Source: pagesix.com
