Christina Applegate Says Showering Is ‘Frightening’ With MS
Christina Applegate is opening up about the toll multiple sclerosis has had on her life and career. In a new interview with Vanity Fair, the Dead to Me actress detailed her daily struggles of living with MS, which she was diagnosed with in 2021.
Applegate, 51, told the publication in Thursday’s (May 4) interview that there is “never a good day” with the disease. “You just have little s—ty days.” When people ask her why she doesn’t take more showers, she says it’s 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,” Applegate explained.
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She admits this is one of the things that people, including herself, take for granted in their lives. “Going down the stairs, carrying things — you can’t do that anymore. It f—ing sucks,” the actress said. “I can still drive my car short distances. I can bring up food to my kid. Up, never down.” Going downstairs is another major difficulty in her life because MS impacts her balance. “Gravity can just pull you down and take everything down with you,” she said. “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.”
Though Applegate has friends who come by and help her and her 12-year-old daughter, Sadie, she doesn’t always want to be around a lot of people because she’s immunocompromised. “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. 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.”
