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actress christina applegate has multiple sclerosis (ms) , she revealed on twitter on tuesday. she was diagnosed “a few months ago,” she wrote. “it’s been a tough road. but as we all know, the road keeps going.”
hi friends. a few months ago i was diagnosed with ms. it’s been a strange journey. but i have been so supported by people that i know who also have this condition. it’s been a tough road. but as we all know, the road keeps going. unless some asshole blocks it.
— christina applegate (@1capplegate) august 10, 2021
and the disease itself also evolves frequently, according to healthline . the most common type at the onset of the disease is rrms, a cycle of relapse and remission. primary progressive ms (ppms) involves short periods of stability, and secondary progressive ms (spms) is when rrms transitions into progressive ms.
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this isn’t applegate’s first scary diagnosis. in 2008, at only 36, the actress was diagnosed with breast cancer. she had been getting regular mammograms since age 30, she told cnn at the time , because she knew she was at risk given that her mother was a breast cancer survivor. but her doctor said mammograms wouldn’t be adequate indicators, because of the denseness of her breasts , and suggested she get an mri.
that mri “ saved my life ,” she said: if she hadn’t gotten it, “they probably would have found the cancer on my next mammogram a year later, where it would have been a much bigger tumour, and could have been a much worse scenario.” she also found out she was positive for the brca1 gene mutation , which puts her at increased risk of developing several kinds of cancer, especially breast and ovarian cancers.
in 2017, she said she also had her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed as a preventative measure due to the brca1 gene. “my cousin passed away from ovarian cancer in 2008. i could prevent that,” she told today .
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as one of my friends that has ms said “ we wake up and take the indicated action”. and that’s what i do. so now i ask for privacy. as i go through this thing. thank you xo
— christina applegate (@1capplegate) august 10, 2021
“i am disabled. i fall sometimes. i drop things. my memory is foggy,” she wrote on instagram in october of that year. “my left side is asking for directions from a broken gps. but we are doing it. and i laugh and i don’t know exactly what i will do precisely but i will do my best.”
“it was a no-brainer, and there was no choice,” she told town & country . “i hadn’t been on a red carpet for so long… i knew, since my diagnosis, people might be watching.”
in 2019, blair underwent a “microdose” of chemotherapy to try to treat her ms. chemo drugs are sometimes prescribed for worsening forms of relapsing ms and spms, according to johns hopkins medicine .
“i was really declining more rapidly than i found acceptable,” she said. “i was like… ‘why would i put this horrible drug in my body? chemotherapy? i don’t have cancer, i don’t need it.’ but i was kind of out of options.”
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applegate has asked for privacy, but may open up about her ms in the future. in 2018, she told people that she’s glad she’s spoken so publicly about her experience with cancer.
“we [as actors] are fortunate to have this platform to be like, ‘i am just like you, i can’t sleep, i feel like crap a lot of the time because of this, but i want you to feel okay with it and not feel shame about it and get information about it so that you can have a better quality of life,'” she said at the time. “and same goes for my battle with cancer.”
for more information on ms, support or to connect with other patients, visit ms society of canada.
