Christina Applegate is opening up about what it’s like living with multiple sclerosis.
During a recent interview with Vanity Fair, the actress discussed what her day-to-day life has been like after her MS diagnosis, saying there is “never a good day.” She then went into detail about all the things she used to do so easily that she realizes now she took for granted.
“You just have little s—ty days. People are like, ‘Well, why don’t you take more showers?’ Well, because getting in the shower is frightening,” Applegate said. “You can fall, you can slip, your legs can buckle. Especially because I have a glass shower. It’s frightening to me to get in there.”
She went on to say “there are just certain things that people,” including herself, “take for granted in their lives.”
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The “Dead to Me” star then detailed some of the things which are now difficult for her. “Going down the stairs, carrying things — you can’t do that anymore. It f—ing sucks,” she shared.
Christina Applegate explained taking a shower, going up the stairs and many other things are difficult for her to do after being diagnosed with MS. (Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for Critics Choice Association)
There are some things Applegate is still able to do on her own, including driving her car short distances, and delivering food upstairs for her daughter Sadie. She emphasized however, going up the stairs has never been hard for her, only coming down, saying that “gravity can just pull you down and take everything down with you.”
“So we have this little thing at the top of the stairs that we call ‘purgatory,'” Applegate explained. “So if anyone’s done with anything upstairs, we put it in purgatory, so one of my able friends can bring it downstairs.”
When speaking about her friends, Applegate explained she probably has a lot less people around than most would assume. The actress said she “doesn’t want to be around a lot of people” because her MS diagnosis makes her immunocompromised.
Applegate also called being in a big group “exhausting,” saying that being in “a crowd of people” is “5,000 times louder for anyone who has lesions on their brain.”
Applegate says she prefers not to be around too many people because she is immunocompromised and because she finds it exhausting. (Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Netflix)
“I have my friend who lives here during the week, and she helps me take care of Sadie. And then on the weekend I have a caretaker,” she said. “I also don’t want a lot of stimulation of the nervous system because it can be a little bit too much for me. I like to keep it as quiet and as mellow as possible.”
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Applegate announced her MS diagnosis in August 2021, revealing she was diagnosed while filming the third and final season of the Netflix show “Dead to Me.” Production was put on hold for five months while Applegate started treatment, saying “it was all about learning” what she was capable of once filming picked up again.
During an appearance on “The Kelly Clarkson Show” in December, the actress called filming the final season “the hardest thing [she’s] ever done,” also telling Variety, it was as “hard as you would possibly think it would be.”
Applegate, who received a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for her work in “Dead to Me,” has also said it will most likely be her final acting role.
Applegate was nominated for a SAG Award for her portrayal of Jen Harding in season three of “Dead to Me.” (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
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“There’s no way I could do the work that I just came off again. I mean, it was so hard,” she told Variety in November. “I’m pretty convinced that this was it, you know? But who knows — I’m probably gonna get real bored of being in my room. I’d like to develop stuff, I’d like to produce stuff. I’ve got a lot of ideas in my mind, and I just need to get them executed.”