'I Can't Get Them to Stop Hurting': Christina Applegate Recalls Thinking 'Legs Are Done' During Previous MS Relapse

Christina Applegate is recalling a troubling period in her multiple sclerosis journey

Published Time: 03.04.2024 - 02:31:14 Modified Time: 03.04.2024 - 02:31:14

Christina Applegate is recalling a troubling period in her multiple sclerosis journey.

In Tuesday's episode of her and Jamie-Lynn Sigler's podcast MeSsy, Applegate, 52, described a painful MS relapse she endured.

"Intense pain in my legs," recalled Applegate. "Not being able to walk to the bathroom without feeling like I'm going to fall. Insane tingling that just has spurts of tingles that are weird coming from like my butt down."

A rep for the actress confirmed to PEOPLE that the podcast episode was recorded "months ago" and that Applegate is no longer in a relapse phase.

At the time of the relapse, Applegate's symptoms were also affecting her ability to sleep.

"I haven't slept for 24 hours because my eye is doing something weird where every time I close my eye to go to sleep my right eye starts to shift like this," she said.

The Dead to Me star noted that she hadn't received a response from her doctor about her symptoms and told Sigler, 42, she was planning to go in and see someone.

"I'm a little concerned about that," she continued. "And my legs have never been this bad so I don't know what's going on. Like, no energy. Legs are just done. I can't get circulation. I can't get them to stop hurting."

After Sigler sympathized and said that "sometimes you can be doing all the right things, and it's not fixing the problem," Applegate described how it was affecting her mental hea -

lth.

"So then you do all the wrong things, and you just lay in a dark room watching TV, wanting it all to go away. And that's kind of where I'm at," she said.

Applegate said she experienced a "deep depression" after a "win vacation."

"It was a win, and then came home, and deep depression set in," she shared. "I'm going to be honest with you. I need to buy stock in Cottonelle because I haven't taken a shower in three weeks because I can't stand in my shower. There is no f------ way I can stand in my shower."

She explained that the bench in her shower was hard to sit on and joked that she made her 13-year-old daughter Sadie smell her armpits "just to make her vomit."

Since being diagnosed with MS in 2021, the diagnosis has been a learning process for her and Sadie.

"She's had to see the loss of her mom, in the way that I was a mom with her,” Applegate shared with PEOPLE in March.

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“Dancing with her every day. Picking her up from school every day. Working at her school, working in the library. Being present out of the house, out of my bed. She doesn't see those things anymore. This is a loss for her as well. And we're both learning as we're going along," said Applegate.

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