STT. Christina Applegate Opens Up About Her Battle with Multiple Sclerosis: “My Life Has Changed Forever”

Christina Applegate: The Painful Truth of Life with Hemisclerosis

Emmy Award-winning actress Christina Applegate has opened up about one of her life’s biggest battles in her new memoir. She was diagnosed with hemisclerosis in June 2021, when she was 49 years old. Two months later, Applegate publicly announced the diagnosis to her fans, candidly stating that her life had changed forever.

“I could have said that I was a miracle,” Applegate wrote in her new memoir, “You With the Sad Eyes.” “Although for most of these days it’s hard to believe that, and anyway, I don’t want to downplay what this disease does to the human body and soul.”

Hemisclerosis attacks the protective sheath around nerve fibers, called myelin, causing inflammation and disrupting signals between the brain and the body. In the United States, nearly 1 million people live with the disease, which can change over time, with symptoms constantly shifting, flaring up, receding, and progressing in unpredictable ways.

“The pain I felt at first wasn’t like it is now,” Applegate wrote. “Back then, it was a feeling of powerlessness, rather than the constant, excruciating pain I’m experiencing now.”

This chronic illness has taken away even the smallest daily activities that she once took for granted.

“Every morning when I wake up, I often can’t move my arm far enough to grab my glass of water by the bedside or my phone from the charger,” she wrote. “My stomach frequently stops, sending me rushing to the emergency room in agony.”

And then, there’s the feeling of exhaustion.

“It felt like I’d been through a three-day-long party without sleep, but not for that reason — that’s how I feel after a good night’s sleep,” Applegate admitted. “So I spent a lot of time lying in bed, cuddling Jake Ryan, my heating pad.”

Looking back, there were warning signs, like that day when she casually asked her orthopedic doctor why her toe was twitching.

“I’ll never forget his look,” she recalled. “‘My mother was like that too,’ he said before quickly changing the subject. ‘Let me work on other things.’”

When the numbness began to appear in her limbs, she underwent a series of tests to find the cause of the symptoms. The results were shared during a Zoom call on Monday morning, and it was a moment that changed everything.

Her doctor showed her an image of her brain, revealing 30 lesions on its surface, before delivering the bad news.

At the time, Applegate was filming the final season of the series “Dead to Me.” Initially, she tried to pull through. But there were days when her body refused to cooperate.

“I remember once trying to go down the stairs in my house at 6 a.m., and only making it to the ninth step,” she wrote. She had to take the day off work.

For Applegate, health battles are nothing new. She broke her leg during a rehearsal for the musical “Sweet Charity” in 2005 and underwent a double mastectomy in 2008 after being diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer.

However, hemisclerosis, she said, is different.

“With a broken leg bone, it will heal. With cancer, I had it removed and can go on living,” she explained. “But hemisclerosis is my inseparable companion. In fact, I might die because of it. It frightens me to death.”

Life with this disease, she wrote frankly, “is terrible.”

“My knees felt like they had bricks stuck in them, heavy and painful,” Applegate noted. “When I put my feet down when I woke up, it felt like the ground was covered in needles, but I couldn’t feel them because my legs were completely numb.”

Her skin felt like it was burning, and even on good days, her pain level was an 8 out of 10.

Pain and Humiliation

Scleroderma also brought her humiliations she never imagined, including having to use adult diapers.

“Diapers are very fashionable for people with hemiplegia because many of us have urinary problems. How funny! But at least they’re making black diapers now,” she said humorously.

“If you really want to know what I’m like: I had to pull that thing out of my body today because of my illness. Oh, and I fell.”

She also joked about launching a diaper line with Jamie-Lynn Sigler, the star of “The Sopranos,” who was also diagnosed with hemisclerosis at age 20.

“Each diaper will have a simple message printed on it: ‘F—K THIS,’” she wrote.

Side Effects of Treatment

Although there is no cure for hemisclerosis, treatments can slow its progression and help reduce symptoms—but they also have their own side effects.

Applegate has to receive steroid injections every six months to slow her disease, but the medication destroys her B cells, making her more susceptible to infections.

They also caused significant weight gain — a shock for an actress who had long struggled with eating issues, including anorexia, when she was filming “Married… With Children.”

Even receiving your star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is a mixed feeling.

“For a time, people looked at my breasts; then they looked at my broken leg,” she said. “But now I know they weren’t just looking because I was disabled; they were looking because I was fat, a fate unacceptable for women in Hollywood.”

Sometimes, she admits, gaining weight causes her more pain than illness.

“I haven’t looked in a mirror in a year,” Applegate wrote.

Doctors eventually put her on a liquid-only diet to control her stomach problems. After seven months, she had lost over 50 pounds. Now, she says her legs are “slimmer than ever.”

She called it a cruel turning point — making peace with food, only to be horrified by her own weakness.

Christina Applegate’s life is no longer the same. She continues to battle hemisclerosis every day, a terrible disease no one wishes to fight. But her strength, resilience, and the stories she shares will help fans, and those going through similar battles, find hope in the darkness.