The 52-year-old was diagnosed with the autoimmune disease in 2021 after noticing tingling in her toes during the filming of the final season of Netflix hit Dead To Me.
Monday’s episode of her MesSy podcast, which she hosts alongside Jamie-Lynn Sigler, who also has MS, was titled The Beauty of the Invisible Disease.
The actress spoke in detail about how her diagnosis has progressed and the painful physical symptoms that she lives with every single day.
"I lay in bed screaming," Applegate said.
Applegate and Sigler spoke with Rory's Bakehouse owner, Rory Kandel, about the physical symptoms of their condition.
Kandel, who also suffers from MS, shared that the "hardest part" of the disease for her is "it's manifesting as pain."
"It feels like I have knives in my spine, and I can't move," Kandel said.
"Like, I'll be laying in bed, and I wake up, and I physically can't turn from side to side."
Applegate agreed, adding that she feels the same way “every single day of my life."
"I can't even pick up my phone sometimes because now it's travelled into my hands," she added.
"So I'll try to go get my phone or get my remote to turn on the TV or whatever, and I can't. Sometimes I can't even hold them. I can't open bottles now.”
"But we look fine because it's the beauty of the Invisible Disease, right?"
Kandel spoke of how “it's so frustrating to look fine” and to be told that she “looks great.”
Later in their discussion, Applegate explained how she can always tell what the day is going to feel like for her based on how easy it is to get out of bed.
“Jamie knows that I just lay in bed all the time. I mean, I worked for almost 50 years, so I'm kind of okay with it,” she said. “But if I put my feet on the ground and they're hurting extraordinarily bad to the touch, I was like, ‘Yep. Gonna get back in my bed and pee in my diaper because I don't feel like walking all the way to the damn bathroom.’”
Applegate clarified that the diaper comment was a joke, explaining, “I actually don't lay here and pee in my diaper. That's just a joke,” she said. “But it's so freaking painful and so hard and so awkward.”
