Christina Applegate is opening up about an honest conversation she had with daughter Sadie amid her ongoing battle with multiple sclerosis.
“I get up [in the morning] because of [Sadie],” Applegate, 53, said on the Wednesday, July 30, episode of SiriusXM’s “Let’s Talk Off Camera With Kelly Ripa” podcast. “She’s the reason I’m still here and trying. But she did say to me and we got into a big thing the other day — and sorry, Sadie, but it has to be said — she said, ‘I missed who you were before you got sick.’”
Applegate noted that the 14-year-old’s comment was a “knife to [the] heart” because she misses who she was before she “got sick” too. (Applegate and husband Martyn LeNoble, who tied the knot in 2013, share Sadie.)
“Very much so,” Applegate noted. “Every day of my life is such a loss. See, now I’m gonna cry. See, this is my problem. I’m either like, extremely traumatic and crying, or I’m cracking myself up. So I’m never in between.”
Applegate revealed in August 2021 that she had been diagnosed with MS — a disease that the National MS Society noted affects the brain, spinal cord and optic nerves, with symptoms including numbness, tingling, pain, fatigue, memory problems, mood changes, blindness and paralysis.
“Hi friends. A few months ago, I was diagnosed with MS,” she wrote via X at the time. “It’s been a strange journey. But I have been so supported by people that I know who also have this condition. It’s been a tough road. But as we all know, the road keeps going. Unless some a**hole blocks it.”
She continued, “As one of my friends that has MS said, ‘We wake up and take the indicated action.’ And that’s what I do. So now I ask for privacy. As I go through this thing. Thank you xo.”
Applegate has since been candid about her battle with the disease, sharing her everyday struggles on the “MesSy” podcast with Jamie-Lynn Sigler — who also was diagnosed with MS. Siger, 44 — who shares sons Beau, 11, and Jack, 6, with husband Cutter Dykstra — shared on Wednesday how her children process her health battle.
“I have two children who react to it in two very different ways,” Sigler explained. “My older son, he looks at me all, ‘You’re gonna beat this thing one day, Mom.’ He’s like my own personal Ted Lasso. He congratulates me all the time for how hard I work. He tells me I’m doing amazing. He’s my cheerleader.”
She continued, “My little one hates it. He’s mad that I can’t run like all the other moms. He points it out all the time. ‘Why do I walk like an old lady?’ That’s what he says. Or like, Why I can do this and I can’t do that. And I think that’s very healthy and I welcome it. And I want him to be able to express himself with me. I don’t want him to feel bad because of how he feels about this, because this affects our entire family.”
Sigler noted that Dykstra “has to make sacrifices every day,” adding that she and both her children do as well. She shared, “I’m the mom they chose and that’s what I have to kind of remind myself all the time.”
“Let’s Talk Off Camera with Kelly Ripa” airs Tuesdays at 5 p.m. ET on SiriusXM’s Radio Andy channel and is available to stream wherever you get your podcasts.
