Christina Applegate still has a sense of humor after a doctor confirmed she was misdiagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
“Talk about being a fraud. I don’t even have it anymore. Geez,” Applegate, 54, joked on the Tuesday, November 3, episode of the “MeSsy” podcast before sharing her serious intentions. “I’ll never leave this community. We made so many lifelong friends, and I care so deeply about everybody that we represent and I represent. I’m still always going to be a part of it in one way or another.”
The Married…With Children actress jokingly used the word “fraud” after special guest Jack Osbourne described his emotions upon being diagnosed with MS back in 2012 when he was 26.
“If I’m being honest, a part of me feels like a bit of a fraud in a sense because I’ll go to these MS events. I’ve had the disease and been diagnosed for 14 years now, and I’ll see people who were diagnosed a year ago and they’re in much worse position and they’re having a much harder time,” Osbourne, 40, explained. “It does affect me. It hasn’t stopped me, and it hasn’t really slowed me down. There’s been windows that it has. … It’s this strange relationship I have to it.”
Applegate’s podcast cohost, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, argued that every person’s journey is different. What’s important to those in the community is feeling less alone.
“I think awareness is so important because the more aware, the less stigma there is around it,” she said. “We don’t have to overcomplicate things. People just want to be seen. They just want to feel like they are part of the world.”
Sigler, 45 — who publicly shared her MS diagnosis in January 2016 — continued, “We don’t want to feel separate because we have this disease. We don’t want to feel separate because we use a cane or we’re in a wheelchair. We still want to move forward and do things.”
During the October 20 episode of the “MeSsy” podcast, Applegate broke down in tears when recalling the moment a doctor told her she doesn’t have MS. The actress went on to explain that she was still struggling with symptoms that are now unexplained.
In her latest podcast episode, Applegate said she was feeling “f***ing frustrated” as she described being “back at square one” after her misdiagnosis.
She explained that she has started doing some testing and exploring the sister diseases to MS, like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and Lyme disease.
“I’m being tested for those things slowly but surely,” she said while trying to shake her past identity. “I lived as a person with MS for almost six years.”
