SEEING THE SIGNS

Christina Applegate became a household name as a teenager, playing Kelly Bundy in the long running sitcom Married with Children. But a lot’s happened since then. In truth she began acting as a child and has worked steadily ever since. Over the years she’s established an enviable career in film and television, including winning a Primetime Emmy for her work on Friends. She starred with Will Farrell in the Hollywood hit Anchorman and has earned both Tony and Golden Globe nominations.

More recently you may have seen the 51 year old in the Netflix comedy drama ‘Dead to Me’. It was during the filming of this show, that she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) an autoimmune disease which disrupts communication between the brain and the body.

Looking back she says that she missed the early signs of her illness and now wishes she had recognised them.

In recent interviews she’s spoken quite candidly about how, over the space of a few years, she became aware of changes in her body.

She’d experienced tingling and numbness in her extremities and this became progressively worse. She’d seen that her tennis game was slipping and then – while shooting a dance sequence for the first season of “Dead to Me’ – she struggled with her balance. And whilst these things did give her cause for concern, she chalked them up to not working hard enough.

But that wasn’t the case and in the summer of 2021, on set for the third and final season of “Dead to Me,” she received confirmation that she had MS.

Earlier this year Applegate opened up about her battle with the condition, sharing how even simple activities like getting into the shower can be frightening. “You can slip, you can fall, your legs can buckle. There are just things that people take for granted in their lives - that I took for granted.”

Speaking of these early warning signs she told the press, “I wish I had paid attention – but who was I to know?”