Christina Applegate explained why her multiple sclerosis has made her feel like a very specific children’s book character.
“I have no muscles in my legs, which I showed you,” Applegate, 52, told Jamie-Lynn Sigler during an episode of their “MeSsy” podcast on Tuesday, August 20. “I look like Humpty Dumpty. My little tiny, weird legs and then my big menopausal belly.”
During Tuesday’s podcast episode, which they noted was recorded back in April, the duo were discussing how their bodies continue to change while battling MS. (Sigler was diagnosed with MS when she was 20 years old, while Applegate went public with her illness in 2021.)
“I was the most active, athletic — if everyone was going to go play a sport, I was in it till the end,” Sigler, 43, recalled. “If everyone was going to go for a walk, I was the first one to be out in the street. That was me, that was my personality. That was my life. I just always wanted to be doing something, and up and out, I was never home. Now I feel like I’m always home.”
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Applegate, however, was more of a homebody in her youth.
“I just wanted to be home. I just liked being home. I liked being in my bed,” she explained. Applegate said that changed when she started her acting career, but now she’s spending most of her time “back in my bed.”
“I like being home now because, well, I like being in my bed, but also I don’t want to be in my bed,” she said. “But once I do go out, I’m happy I’ve done it.”
When Applegate does leave her house, she makes sure that whoever she hangs out with knows she has limits.
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“What I’ve done now is, with everyone that I know who wants to do something with me, and they know that it’s not going to be a hike in the hills,” she added. “That’s not going to happen because I’m so not conditioned right now, which is a whole other subject because I haven’t been moving. Like if I go up a hill, my heart starts beating really fast and I think I’m going to have a heart attack because my heart’s just … the muscle isn’t there.”
Applegate also asks her friends for “grace” in case she needs to “cancel right before” their planned hangout session.
“I always say, sure, if you want to go to lunch, just know — and you have to know this and you can’t be mad at me — that if right before you come to pick me up, if I say can’t do it, you can’t be mad,” she explained. “It’s my little disclaimer.”
