Christina Applegate Details ‘Intense Pain’ From MS Relapse

Christina Applegate is opening up about an incredibly painful period of her multiple sclerosis journey. The 52-year-old actress described a relapse she experienced during Tuesday’s episode of her and Jamie-Lynn Sigler’s MeSsy podcast, which was recorded “months ago,” her representative confirmed to PEOPLE.

The Dead to Me actress said that during her relapse she was experiencing “intense pain” in her legs, which left her “not being able to walk to the bathroom without feeling like I’m going to fall” and had her feeling “insane tingling that just has spurts of tingles that are weird coming from like my butt down.”

Applegate said her symptoms during her relapse were also keeping her from sleeping, “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 continued, “I’m a little concerned about that. 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.”

Having things take a turn while “doing all the right things” can be frustrating, Sigler noted, as Applegate admitted, “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.” After a “win” of a vacation, the Emmy winner shared she went into a “deep depression” that led her to forego showering for three weeks because “there is no f-king way I can stand in my shower.”

Since being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2021, Applegate has been open about the impact the condition has had on her mental health. Last month, in an interview with Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast, Applegate said candidly, “I’m not ready for the healing yet. I will get there. When someone says, ‘Have you accepted this as your new normal?’ No, f-k you, absolutely not.’”

“It’s the worst tattoo. It sucks,” she continued of her desire not to sugarcoat the reality of her condition. “I’m not gonna sit here and… some people go, ‘Oh my god, cancer’s the best thing that happened to me!’ And I’m like, ‘Uhh, then you had a pretty s-ty life.’ This is the worst thing that’s happened to me in my entire life. I hate it so much. I’m so mad about it.”