Christina Applegate Hospitalized in L.A.

I very much think you should listen to the book as it’s the only autobiography I’ve heard where the author actually cries. She is very emotional, and raw. She shares of growing up with a single mother. A woman whose slew of boyfriends often abused her *and* Christina. She was first molested by a neighborhood kid at just 4 years old. She shares she’s never truly been able to enjoy sex since it was stolen from her at such a young age. She dated a horrific abuser for half a decade who beat her senseless in front of her mother and grandmother. Her mom’s friend had introduced them when she was a teenager and he was… not. Still her mother dropped her off at his hotel hours later. He scolded her for eating more than fruit and told her she was hideous. Still she’s forgiven her mother and her father who had left. I can’t summarize why, but she humanizes them in a way that left me speechless. She talks about growing up on Married With Children and how she loathed how stupid they made her character, how her outfits got tighter and shorter. How she was the breadwinner for her family and when “don’t tell mom the babysitters dead” bombed she felt like a total failure. She talks about how the “bad moms”executive team from the studio who produced the film called her in to show her her face on a full-size movie screen and tell her they had to spend $50,000 to retouch her because she looked 'too old'. And then, of course, there is her cancer diagnosis followed by MS. Either of those in themselves is enough tragedy for one lifetime. For most of her life the only thing that brought her pure joy was dancing, and that too was stolen from her. She is very candid in that she finds it hard to find a will to live these days since she is mostly just anchored to her bed living in immense, unfaltering pain. She stays in the same house with her daughter and husband that she bought herself decades ago. Right when she found her 'perfect role' in Dead to Me, acting was taken from her too. She really loved that show and the team as well as her costar seemed so wonderful. They actually paused shooting when she was diagnosed and a three month shoot ended up taking over a year, but they took their time and allowed her to finish the story. That is pretty unheard of in the industry where every day added to filming costs tens of thousands of dollars. The way she speaks about them, they are family to her. After a lifetime in the industry she finally found the show she deserves and then this happened. She alludes to them knowing it would be the last time she would be able to act. It is all so unfair. She stuck it out and fought through the pain to finish the show. I am talking immense pain, as in she knew the exact number of steps she had from her bed to get out the door and she would call it a victory if she could do more than 7. It is a really tragic tale. And one I wish more people read. Again I am just summarizing here, but if it makes even one person hear her story, it’s worth it.

I think what we’re really hoping for is a synopsis here in this thread.

Unfortunately, this is quite common. My neurologist said that Covid wrecks our immune system and either makes current autoimmune issues worse or people without issues can get them after an infection. There’s a reason that Covid was, and in some instances still is, labeled a BSL-3 pathogen.

Covid hit me too, though but not to that extent (I also have ms). I was practically fine before, but a huge relapse of symptoms due to covid (pre vaccination) means I’m wobbly, sometimes in a wheelchair, always fatigued.

I'm so sorry to hear that. It's such a terrible disease. 

Do you think it's possible that Christina is doing this and that's why she's been in the hospital? When you get it done, do you have to be in the hospital for a few weeks?

I believe with a bone marrow transplant, it works or you die from it because your body rejects it, so it can be very high risk which is probably why it's not used as a "cure" very often. It's more like a last resort at this point. Hopefully that changes in the future.

It can effectively cure it but it’s not a guarantee and doing it absolutely can kill you because they must first fully obliterate your existing immune system with chemo and/or radiation. That’s why they don’t do it for everyone. It’s also extremely expensive and insurance doesn’t usually cover it in the US anyway. I have a friend who also has MS and she went to Mexico to do it and was essentially cured. She said she still deals with the effects of the damage it had already done but she’s not getting any more, at least not yet. Selma Blair tried it and it failed her. So yeah…not a guarantee at all and quite dangerous to do, they’ve cured some folks of HIV like that by accident too. It may be the solution to a lot of immune diseases but as of right now it’s too risky and expensive to be practical for most.

a) they are women b) maybe the symptoms didnt show up until into adulthood. As far as I know both have been diagnosed for quite some time.

If you don’t have a dramatic relapse that forces them to quickly do an MRI and spinal tap to rule out potentially deadly things…hoo boy, it can take a long time. I had symptoms as far back as 2006, had my brain MRI and it was normal so no further testing was done and I was diagnosed with post concussion syndrome (I’d just had a couple bad ones close together.) I went for years like that not really having any obvious symptoms, but I was starting to have a lot of trouble with my memory and minor issues with speech. Was dealing with some weird transient weakness and unrelenting fatigue too. So I signed up to get paid for a research study that did a brain MRI. They called me the next day and said I needed to come get the report to take it to my doctor. I already had self diagnosed pretty much at that point, but that told me for sure what it probably was. Confirmed it via lumbar puncture. So yeah…twenty ish years from my first symptoms to diagnosis, assuming those were actually my first symptoms and not the result of the concussions. I’d also had mono really bad in 2004/05 which is also linked to developing it. And I’m someone who goes to the doctor and regularly complains and is really thorough about describing symptoms and it still took going outside of our healthcare system to get the MRI so I could basically diagnose it myself.

I’m right on top of that, Rose!