Christina Applegate feels like Humpty Dumpty with ‘big, menopausal belly’ amid MS battle
Christina Applegate admitted she feels like Humpty Dumpty amid her battle with multiple sclerosis.
“I have no muscles in my legs. … I look like Humpty Dumpty. Like, my little, tiny, weird legs and then my big, menopausal belly,” the “Dead to Me” star told her co-host Jamie-Lynn Sigler in Tuesday’s episode of their “MeSsy” podcast.
Applegate shared the update while explaining why she has limited her physical activities with friends.
“Everyone I know who wants to do something with me … they know it’s not gonna be a hike in the hills. That’s not gonna happen because I’m so not conditioned right now,” she explained.
“Like, if I go up a hill, my heart starts beating really fast, and I think I’m gonna have a heart attack because the muscle isn’t there.”
The actress, 52, said she has learned to cut back on physical activity, which has forced her to issue a “disclaimer” to her friends that she may need to cancel plans regardless of the difficulty.
“I always say, ‘If you wanna 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 added.
“If I’m puking or can’t walk, you think I’m gonna go to a restaurant or go do anything? No, I’m not gonna do that.”
The “Married… with Children” alum confessed she has always been a homebody, so she was able to effortlessly ease into staying in most days.
However, Applegate is still working on accepting that her life has changed since revealing her MS diagnosis in August 2021.
“You either feel s–tty or you feel less s–tty when you have MS. There’s never like, ‘Oh my God, I’m back to who I was before all this happened!’ No. For me, no, that’s never gonna happen in my entire life. I will never be the girl I was in 2020. I will never be that person again, and that’s what I have to accept,” she said.
The Emmy winner regularly speaks candidly about how her life has changed since being diagnosed with the incurable autoimmune disease, which affects the central nervous system or brain and spinal cord.
She has admitted to “falling over in the shower” while trying to shave, gaining 40 pounds and needing to wear diapers.
In June, Applegate shared that she does not “enjoy living” after revealing that she has 30 lesions on her brain and had lost circulation in her legs during an MS relapse.
“I’m in a depression right now, which I don’t think I’ve felt that for years. Like a real, f–k-it-all depression where it’s kind of scaring me, too, a little bit because it feels really fatalistic. I’m trapped in, like, this darkness right now that I haven’t felt [in], like, I don’t even know how long, probably 20-something years,” she said on her podcast at the time.
The “Anchorman” actress has made a few public appearances walking with her cane but mostly stayed out of the spotlight the last three years.
