Christina Applegate was a guest Dax Shepard’s armchair expert podcast this week, and provided an update on her battle with multiple sclerosis (MS).
The 52-year-old Dead to Me actress – who says she is using her sense of humor to cope – revealed: ‘I have 30 lesions in my brain. My biggest one is behind my right eye, so my right eye hurts a lot.”
The longtime artist, who was diagnosed with MS in 2021, called the condition the “worst thing that happened” in her “whole life.”
Applegate’s vision is still intact, but she described another side effect she experiences.
“My hand starts to feel strange and sometimes I get a feeling of attack in my brain,” she said.
Christina Applegate was a guest on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast this week and provided an update on her battle with multiple sclerosis (MS); pictured in January
The 52-year-old Dead to Me actress – who says she is using her sense of humor to cope – revealed: ‘I have 30 lesions in my brain. My biggest one is behind my right eye, so my right eye hurts a lot.”
Multiple sclerosis is a condition in which the immune system attacks the body and causes nerve damage to the brain and spinal cord.
Elsewhere in the conversation, Applegate admitted to being the “worst MSer” because she prefers to go back to bed rather than stretch her muscles when she’s dealing with pain.
She compared MS to a “mean girl” who “pushes back” when she overexerts herself.
“It sucks,” Christina said bluntly. ‘I hate it so much. I’m so angry about it. You can’t overcome it.’
The Anchorman star previously triumphed over breast cancer, but said ‘everything I said was a damn lie’ when she was going through it.
“I tried to convince myself of something, and I don’t think that helped anyone,” she reflected, noting that she now wants to open up about her experiences with multiple sclerosis.
In 2008, she underwent a double mastectomy to remove breast cancer.
She then also had her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed in 2017 as a precaution against ovarian cancer.
Christina with 13-year-old daughter Sadie Grace LeNoble in February 2023
The actress pictured at the 2020 Critics’ Choice Awards
Applegate admitted that she relies on humor to cope with multiple sclerosis while promoting her new podcast on Jimmy Kimmel Live this month.
She joked with Jimmy about her condition after walking on stage with a stick.
‘I thought, wouldn’t it be funny if I came out and did a somersault like Willy Wonka? And then I was like ta-da! You’d be like, ‘What a ****. She’s such a liar.” I’m not. I am literally disabled,” Christina said.
“I learned from our texts that you have a very sick sense of humor,” Jimmy said.
‘That’s how I live. This is how I make sure I’m okay,” she replied.
