Six years ago, Christina Applegate was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). At the time, she had significant health problems and the diagnosis seemed to make sense and answer a lot of questions about her symptoms. Now, six years later, Applegate was informed by her doctors that she was misdiagnosed. Which is apparently much more common than I ever realized? Applegate is still in shock about it.
Christina Applegate returned to hosting her MeSsy podcast with shocking news. On Tuesday, Oct. 20, Applegate and co-host Jamie Lynn Sigler released back-to-back episodes of their podcast, where the actresses have raw discussions about their respective journeys with multiple sclerosis. However, during her return episode Applegate, 54, emotionally shared that she’s taken time away from the podcast to process a new revelation from her doctor — she does not, in fact, have MS.
“She came into my room and said, ‘Congratulations, you don’t have MS,’ ” Applegate recalled through tears. “I was, like, not happy at all. Everybody else was so happy.”
Dr. Marwa Kaisey, associate professor with the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center department of neurology, who joined Applegate and Sigler for the second episode of the podcast, says MS misdiagnoses are “fairly common” due to the fact that “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.”
Kaisey says nearly 20 percent of those diagnosed with MS turn out not to have the disease. “Almost one in five 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.”
Applegate noted that despite learning that she’d been misdiagnosed, it didn’t impact any of her debilitating symptoms.
“You don’t get misdiagnosed and then all of the sudden I’m better,” Applegate continued. “I haven’t gotten better, Jamie! If anything, I’ve gotten worse. So I’m back at square one where I don’t know what’s going on with me. And 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?”
In the Part II of the podcast, Applegate once again got emotional, saying, “I’ve gone through a great depression because of it. But I lost everything. I lost my job. I lost — I’m sorry. What do you say to someone who’s been living with this for six years — God, I’m so sorry — because it stopped my life. I still have to use wheelchairs when I go to the doctor’s office. 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 actress admitted to struggling with her place in the MS community, especially after building a community of others who were diagnosed with MS.
“It’s weird because I feel like I let everybody down,” Applegate shared. “It’s this weird feeling because I became this — you and I, the poster children for MS. And everything I was doing. I had a reason. I had a f—ing 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.” Applegate said she’s still in a “state of shock” over the misdiagnosis, calling it a “mindf—.”
Granted, I’m no medical expert, but if 20% of MS diagnoses are false, then what were those people eventually diagnosed with? Because let’s start there – what health issue largely mimics MS to the point where one out of five MS diagnoses are false? God, I feel so sorry for Christina – even though she was suffering, she at least felt like she had a name for what was happening to her, she had a way to explain it, she had an established course of treatment. Now it’s like… anything goes. Starting from square one.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.
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- 29th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards. Fairmont Century Plaza, Los Angeles, California. Featuring: Christina Applegate Where: Los Angeles, California, United States When: 26 Feb 2023 Credit: BauerGriffin/INSTARimages
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- Los Angeles, CA – Christina Applegate greets her fans as she exits her Hollywood Walk of Fame star ceremony after making her first public appearance after her MS diagnosis. Pictured: Christina Applegate BACKGRID USA 14 NOVEMBER 2022 BYLINE MUST READ: Be Like Water Media / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- 29th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards. Fairmont Century Plaza, Los Angeles, California. Featuring: Christina Applegate Where: Los Angeles, California, United States When: 26 Feb 2023 Credit: BauerGriffin/INSTARimages
I feel for Christina. Speaking from my own experience, I was almost misdiagnosed with MS myself. Turns out I had Celiac Disease and was suffering from Celiac Encephalopathy. We figured it out about two weeks before I was due for a spinal tap that was supposed to diagnose me with MS. My specialist was genuinely surprised when my IGN test and MRI came back. Diagnosing autoimmune diseases is a beast and not for the fainthearted clinician. Once I went gluten free, all my other symptoms disappeared. I was grateful not to have to go through with the spinal tap.
That said, while Christina had the best of intentions, she shouldn’t feel the need to be a poster child for anything. I hope they figure out what’s going on with her and she has a chance to heal from this.
Autocorrect turned IGA to IGN for whatever reason.
SO I have chronic illness that can emulate MS to the point I had to have brain scans anyway and the typical plaques weren’t there.
However, I have another chronic illness that’s common to women and very poorly understood. One dr here even said she didn’t believe it or at least major symptoms of it. I won’t name names. But it shows the appalling training around chronic illness that affects women predominantly.
I have many many days in bed. I have many days with a walking stick. Some ok. I’m seeing drs, physios etc about 4x a week on average. Ive just had a painful month going through 3 meds to see what I DON’T react to. I don’t take pain meds but I have 6/10 minimum pain all day every day. I’ve resisted going to the pain people. At the moment I have 7 specialists.
To that dr here who is a regular poster, I hope you no longer practice for my sake and million ls others.
It’s no shame to be misdiagnosed, and for her it’s a blessing. But I bet she’s got most of what I have. That i don’t envy.
I had a rheumatologist that said I had fibromyalgia for years and refused to see past that. I thought maybe I wasn’t explaining myself properly due to my brain fog and memory loss. I started keeping notes of my symptoms on my phone so I could take it to him. When I printed it, it was THREE PAGES! So I took it to him. He glanced at it, set it aside and said “Yeah, I told you you have fibromyalgia. What do you want me to do about it?“ He did tell me I should go see a neurologist because of the numbness in my hands. When I went to the neurologist, I took her that same list of symptoms, and she actually took the time to read the entire list, separate the systems into categories so she could look at what we needed to rule out. However, when she was going through my notes from the rheumatologist to get familiar with my case, he didn’t actually log any of the symptoms I had told him, and instead wrote “She has a long list of complaints. No significant change.” He hadn’t done bloodwork in two years at that point and I had pages of symptoms! My husband was furious, and wanted me to file a complaint against him with the medical board. My neurologist is great, and I had already scheduled an appointment with a new rheumatologist because I had a feeling that my last rheumatologist appointment wasn’t going to go well anyway. The new rheumatologist had me diagnosed within three weeks of my first appointment with him. Luckily, I have not suffered any permanent damage based on the fact that the original rheumatologist didn’t bother to diagnose me. However, I’m still within the first year of trying to get my medication sorted and figure out what’s going to work best for me. And I also live with a baseline pain of six out of 10, So that’s fun. Getting people to take the severe pain associated with invisible illness is also a struggle. Medical gaslighting for people with chronic illness, especially a middle aged women with a few extra pounds, is real.
The gaslighting is something else. Ive had decades of it and sadly most drs still do it. Like they twist themselves into knots to explain complex symptoms. I know I know more than 70% of them do now because I’m a reader and persistent. The funniest thing, insta has also been so helpful. With my condition, and it’s comorbidities, drs who understand it, study it and often have it are an excellent resource. As are rhe correct physios, and they’re on insta too, often.
Sending the biggest hugs to her. She is a force of nature. Love you Christina!!
A friend was misdiagnosed with MS 40 years ago. He’s doing great.
It must be terrifying that she now has no diagnosis.
As someone with a much less serious autoimmune condition, I can only imagine how frustrating and agonising this is. If you are lucky and you have a brilliant endocrinologist you can get treatment in time to save years coping with side effects or untreated symptoms. But it takes a flukish miraculous type of luck to find someone who’s got the gift.
MS is hard to diagnose at least partly because different people have different symptoms. It can relapse (get worse), then suddenly remit (get better, up to and including having no symptoms), then relapse again.
There are a bunch of other symptoms, and different people experience them differently.
A friend died from MS a few years ago, right after Christmas Day. It’s a horrible, confusing disease.
As someone with a sereonegative DX of a rare autoimmune disorder like MS…Who became ill at the SAME time as Christina…the HELL I’ve had to go through regarding the medical 🌎 & even family & friends trying to navigate a proper DX has been 😱 because autoimmune DX like ours are tricky and not enough research 💲 has been dedicated to the study of the MANY autoimmune disorders in this country that can render you disabled…I was told in March by a so-called SPECIALIST 🤬 that perhaps I have a VITAMIN DEPLETION ISSUE…😲 She wasn’t even FAMILIAR with sereonegative DXs of my disorder! And I had to pay $250 for THAT BS! I almost caught a CASE🤬 Thank G-d my personal Neurologist & Internist have an understanding because I LITERALLY have to do the research myself with most of it coming from Japan & Europe because their health systems have invested in autoimmune disorder research for YEARS! And there really isn’t even true definitive TESTING available for my issue…It’s a 💔 when you have ALL the physical issues of a disease but you’re told you DON’T have that disease…so now I’m wondering if MS has a sereonegative part also…I’m SO TRIGGERED 😭
While said in an earlier comment that I side-eye diagnoses of exclusion, let me be clear: that is only for normal people with a healthy immune system.
I am severely immunoglobulin deficient in which case serological testing simply cannot be relied upon for diagnosing certain conditions. Many doctors and specialists don’t seem to understand that. So, I can understand your frustration and wish you all of the best in your health journey and strongly suggest that, if you haven’t already, having some immunoassays run.
Yeah, I side-eye any and all Diagnoses of Exclusion. I have seen in my own medical journeys doctors who were inclined to land on a diagnosis of exclusion because, honestly, it was easier. Fortunately, I had some great, diligent, doctors who actually did the work and discovered the actual underlying medical conditions.
Oh man I love Christina and have been following her on her MS journey so I know how much finding community around her disease meant to her. I’ve admired her vulnerability and honesty about dealing with MS so much. I can only imagine how complicated her feelings are right now and how lost she must feel. Everyone around her is so happy for her but she’s probably never felt more unmoored with no diagnosis. Sigh.
I can’t imagine being told you have a disease for years to find out you don’t. The doctor was insensitive considering the mental and physical aspects of a misdiagnosis.
Chronic illnesses can be really hard to pin down. My sister in law has POTS and it took her YEARS to finally get the right diagnosis so she could receive the right treatment. She went through hell. Had to travel around the country to see different specialists. Got some treatments that really messed her up because she was misdiagnosed. Wishing Christina some answers soon.
That’s so confusing because MS has really clear diagnosis markers. I have MS. It first presented as optic neuritis (which is blindness in one eye (usually) due to nerve damage). At that time, my initial brain scan did not show demyelination in my central nervous system although there were spots that looks “suspicious.” I was not diagnosed at that time with MS just kind of like pre MS (I forget the medical word). My doctors were clear that I was NOT at that time diagnosed with MS. Anyway I continued to have symptoms and six months later another brain/spinal scans showed clear spots of demyelination which is when I was diagnosed. Based on my experience with diagnosis, I don’t really understand how this happens 20% of the time.
I’ve got to say that reading about Christina’s misdiagnosis and Joe Manganiello’s book Bloodlines about his seven plus year medical ordeal has caused me to question the quality of medical diagnosis training here in the US. What on earth has gone wrong? In my own family, it took over ten years to diagnose my sister-in-law with frontal temporal lobe dementia. People can make fun of alternative medical approaches all they want, but maybe they are worth a try. If celebrities who have the financial means to access the “best medical care in the world” (not really) can’t get diagnosed and treated properly, what hope is there for the rest of us?
They honestly just don’t listen. They’re so convinced that they know better, that there is no though process involved at all.
I have IBS, which is what they diagnose anyone who has gastro related issues but when they can’t figure out why you have said gastro issues. The number of times I have gone to a gastroenterologist, fully prepared to get into the depths of my symptoms, only to be cut off mid-speech about how it sounds like IBS and that we can schedule an endoscopy or colonoscopy for the 20th time to eliminate anything else. I have changed numerous doctors for this reason just on the off chance that I find someone who will actually try to figure out why I have pain all the time. I am not a hypochondriac that needs to be diagnosed with something, but no one should be in pain every day. Misogyny also plays a huge part into it as we know that women possibly can’t know when something is wrong with their bodies. *eyeroll*
I just read Robert Kolker’s book about a family with a form of frontal temporal lobe dementia. They can’t even get research on drugs going. It must be enormously frustrating.
So, I dont want to be glib, but the insurance companies and the for profit nature of our healthcare system play a big role here. My brother is a surgeon for a large local medical practice (it probably has 50 locations across the area.) there is so much pressure from the top down of that organization to maximize appointments – i.e. see as many patients as you can, schedule expensive procedures when you can (even if not 100% necessary, as long as there is “some” basis for it), etc. And those things are the basis of your pay, so one doctor who sees 15 patients a day gets more money in their paycheck than a doctor who sees 7 patients a day, unless they make up for it by scheduling those expensive procedures. (because then the org can bill more from the insurance.) he’s required to counsel every patient on obesity, even if their obesity has nothing whatsoever to do with their condition (i.e he has to document that he at least said “have you considered losing weight.”)
so in that environment, doctors stand to lose if they don’t just give you a diagnosis and move on. An easy diagnosis gets them as much money as spending more time with you and giving you the right diagnosis.
(for the record my brother refuses and is just like meh they dont have anyone else who can do the surgeries I do, lol. and he still makes very good money. he just takes time with his patients.)
I dont think insurance and for-profit healthcare is the only issue we have, but I think it plays a big part.
That’s all frustrating and scary! So she’s been treated for six years for something she did not have – – is it possible that some of the treatment or medication she was receiving for this misdiagnosis have made whatever her actual condition is worse! I feel like there’s so much medically that science still has not managed to discover – – all of these unknown conditions, still no real cures for most cancers, IBS, Parkinson’s, etc. we need political change so that we can devote more tax dollars again to researching the causes and cures for all of these issues.