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Christina Applegateis giving more insight on how much multiple sclerosis has impacted her everyday life.
In a recent interview withVanity Fair, theDead to Meactress reflected on the little things she took for granted before she was diagnosed with MS in 2021.
“With the disease of MS, it’s never a good day,” the 51-year-old told the outlet. “You just havelittleshitty days. People are like, ‘Well, why don’t you take more showers?’ Well, because getting in the shower is frightening. 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.”
“There are just certain things that people take for granted in their lives thatItook for granted,” she admitted. “Going down the stairs, carrying things — you can’t do that anymore. It f—ing sucks.”
Multiple sclerosisis a disease that affects the central nervous system — the brain and spinal cord — and can cause problems with muscle control and strength, vision, balance, feeling and thinking. Symptoms include: numbness, tremor or lack of coordination.
MS differs in each case, with some people going through life with only minor problems and others becoming seriously disabled.
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Applegate told the outlet that she’s still able to drive her car short distances and bring food upstairs to her 12-year-old daughter Sadie Grace. However, she emphasized that she’s fine going “up, never down.”
“Gravity can just pull you down and take everything down with you,” she explained. “So we have this little thing at the top of the stairs that we call ‘purgatory.’ So if anyone’s done with anything upstairs, we put it in purgatory so one of my able friends can bring it downstairs.”
The actress added that although many assume she has a team of friends and family helping her with these everyday tasks, she’s kept her circle small since her diagnosis.
“I actually don’t want to be around a lot of people because I’m immunocompromised,” Applegate continued. “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. 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.
“It’s exhausting,” she said of her symptoms. “Imagine just being in a crowd of people and how loud that is. It’s like 5,000 times louder for anyone who has lesions on their brains.”
TheBad Momsstar was diagnosed with MS in August 2021, while she was filming the third season of her Netflix dramedyDead to Me, and the show halted production so that she could begin treatment.
After wrapping up the series, she spoke toVarietyabout finishing the show with her symptoms, revealing it was “as hard as you would possibly think it would be.”
The actress explained that she’s seeking “a place that will allow me to [work five hours] if I’m not the star,” and that starring in something might be off the table in the future. “There’s no way I could do the work that I just came off again. I mean, it wassohard,” she said.
“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,” she added. “I’ve got a lot of ideas in my mind, and I just need to get them executed.”
source: people.com
