Christina Applegate has tearfully revealed that her doctor has told her she was misdiagnosed with multiple sclerosis five years ago, in a crushing development that she said has left her lost, confused and “back at square one.”
In her first “MeSsy” podcast episode on Tuesday, after a monthslong sabbatical and hospital stay, the “Anchorman” actor shared the shocking news from her doctor that she said everyone was happy to hear except her.
“She came into my room and said, ‘Congratulations, you don’t have MS,’” she recalled with co-host Jamie Lynn Sigler, who was also diagnosed with the autoimmune disease that affects the brain and spinal cord.
“You don’t get misdiagnosed and then all of a sudden, I’m better. I haven’t gotten better, Jamie. If anything, I’ve gotten worse in some ways,” she said.
“So I’m back at square one, that I don’t know what’s wrong with me. And that’s going to be an online investigation that my doctors are going to get into, and just to find out what has been happening since 2021. Why did this happen? I have every symptom of someone who has MS. Every single one.”
A neurology professor who joined Applegate and Sigler in a second podcast episode about the misdiagnosis explained that no single test can confirm the condition and that nearly 20% of people diagnosed with MS don’t actually have it.
“Almost 1 in 5 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,” said Dr. Marwa Kaisey, associate professor with the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center department of neurology.
Applegate, 54, said that, since hearing she was misdiagnosed, she’s battled a series of tormenting, negative thoughts, where she questions whether she did something wrong, if she’s really sick, and whether she’s “let everybody down” because she has been a prominent advocate for MS awareness and research.
“Everything I was doing, I had a reason. I had a fucking reason why my days sucked every day, and now I don’t have a reason and it’s very unnerving and it’s really confusing for me,” she said.