Hollywood star Christina Applegate has opened up symptoms she overlooked before her shock diagnosis with multiple sclerosis, in her new memoir, You With The Sad Eyes.
The Dead To Me actress, 54, was diagnosed with the chronic autoimmune condition back in June 2021.
She shared the news with fans just months later, and has since become a vocal advocate about the signs and symptoms of MS in an attempt to raise awareness and prevent anyone else from missing the signs.
“The pain I felt initially was not like it is these days. Back then, it was more of an I‐have‐no‐strength kind of pain, rather than the often excruciating agony I’m in now," she wrote, detailing how the condition has developed over the years.
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Multiple sclerosis, or MS, is a disease which attacks the protective material around the nerve fibres in the body, called myelin.
This attack can trigger inflammation, and causes the signals between the brain and the body to be scrambled.
Applegate recalled there were some less obvious signs that she had been ignoring, in the run up to her diagnosis.
According to the NY Post, she wrote how she mentioned to her chiropractor that her toes were twitching, and asked him why that might be.
“I’ll never forget the look he gave me,” she said, and recalled his response of 'My mom has that' before he changed the subject.
The weakness and numbness soon spread to other limbs, and she sought out medical help for tests.
Her diagnosis came on a Zoom call one Monday morning, and Applegate says that was the moment everything changed for her.
She recalled the bombshell moment her doctor pointed out 30 lesions on an image of her brain, before confirming the diagnosis.
Applegate was onset for the final season of Dead To Me at the time.
The star previously broke her foot while performing in Sweet Charity, and underwent a double mastectomy in 2008 following a breast cancer diagnosis.
Despite this, she says neither compares to the pain and suffering of MS: “With my broken metatarsal, well, a broken bone heals. With the cancer, it was taken out of my body, and I was able to move on."
Applegate added: "MS is my constant companion. In fact, I will probably go away because of it. It scares me to death.”
She talks candidly about the symptoms she deals with on a daily basis.
“When I wake up, I often can’t get my arm to move far enough to grab the cup of water by my bed or my phone from its charger,” she explained.
"My stomach frequently slows to a halt, leaving me to regularly rush to the emergency room in agony.”
The condition also leaves her feeling exhausted and confined to her bed: “It feels as though I’ve been on a three-day-long sleepless bender, but no bender for me — that’s how I feel after a good night’s sleep, hence all the time I spend on and in bed, snuggled up against Jake Ryan, which is what I call my heating pad.”
“My knees feel like I have bricks attached to them, heavy and painful, and when I put my feet down on the ground when I wake up, it feels as if the floor is made of needles, yet I can’t feel them because my feet are completely numb," she revealed.
The star rates her daily pain scale at eight out of ten.
There is no known cure for MS, but some treatments can alleviate symptoms, but often come with their own complications.
Applegate undergoes steroid infusions every six months, but they leave her vulnerable to infections, as well as major weight gain, which the star said was crushing to deal with in superficial Hollywood. “I didn’t look in the mirror for a year,” she confessed.
According to the MS Society, more than 150,000 people are estimated to be living with the condition in the UK, with an additional 7,100 diagnosed every year.
Women are two and a half times more likely than men to be diagnosed with MS.
What are the symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis (MS)?
Like with any illness, symptoms can differ from person to person but here are the most common side effects of MS according to Mayo Clinic:
- Numbness or tingling.
- Electric-shock sensations that happen with certain neck movements, especially bending the neck forward. This sensation is called Lhermitte sign.
- Lack of coordination.
- Trouble with walking or not being able to walk at all.
- Weakness.
- Partial or complete loss of vision, usually in one eye at a time. Vision loss often happens with pain during eye movement.
- Double vision.
- Blurry vision.
- Dizziness and a false sense that you or your surroundings are moving, known as vertigo.
- Trouble with sexual, bowel and bladder function.
- Fatigue.
- Slurred speech.
- Troubles with memory, thinking and understanding information.
- Mood changes
Topics: Health, Women's Health, Christina Applegate, Celebrity
Jen Thomas