Emma Guinness
A health diagnosis can be a difficult thing to accept, which is why the support of friends and family is often a godsend for people.
Now, Selma Blair, 50, has stepped up to the mark and offered her support to Christina Applegate, also 50, after the two women were tragically diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS).
Blair was the first of the two women to be diagnosed with MS back in October 2018, while the Dead to Me star sadly received the same diagnosis in August of last year.
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According to the NHS, MS is a lifelong condition that varies in severity and affects an individual's brain and spinal cord.
Some of the symptoms include trouble with your vision, movement in your arms or legs, and sensation or balance problems.
"I've known Christina for so many years, we're really close, and I'm just a fan of hers," Blair recently told Entertainment Tonight.
"She is an iconic California girl actress of my generation, and she is it.
"There has not been one thing that she's done that I haven't been like, 'Nailed it,' and she's nailing just being who she is with this MS."
Blair said that Applegate is 'just a strong one' and has given her a lot of support as they each battle the condition, which affects the transmission of signals between the brain and the rest of the body.
"If you need something she's at your house. There have been things that I had been unglued, and she's like, 'I'm outside. Answer the door.' She's just amazing and strong and fun," Blair said.
As Blair has been living with the condition the longest, she's been helping her friend out with tools that can make it more manageable, such as canes to help with her balance.
"[Applegate] has a lot on her plate. It's a lot, but she's as brilliant and beautiful as ever," Blair added.
Applegate explained that her ordeal began in January of last year when she began to experience symptoms of the disease that soon progressed in severity while filming the third and final season of Dead to Me.
She told Variety: "I started having symptoms in January 2021 - very small, something you could just brush off.
"Right before we started shooting [in May 2021], it was as if I got hit by a truck and didn’t know what was going on."
She said it ultimately felt like her body was no longer her own and people worked around her sickness 'until, finally, [I] had answers.'
"I found that I had MS [multiple sclerosis]... [the diagnosis] sucked, I'm not going to lie.
Appleton admitted: "There is no processing the fact that you have a life-long degenerative disease."