Christina Applegate hospitalized with a kidney infection
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Christina Applegate is back in the hospital.
The Dead to Me actress explained on Tuesday’s edition of the MeSsy podcast, which she cohosts with Jamie-Lynn Sigler, that she was speaking from one in L.A. She said that she’s unsure of exactly what’s going on, other than that she has a kidney infection, but she assured listeners that she would recover.
“I didn’t, by the way, people out there, I’m not doing a podcast from the hospital because I felt like doing one from the hospital was an awesome idea,” Applegate said. “We just happen to have this scheduled and they won’t let me leave yet because things are, things are messy, but I’m going to be OK. How am I? I’m, right now, I’m waiting till, at one o’clock, I get medicines to feel better. So that’s how I’m doing right now.”
Astrid Stawiarz/Getty; Phillip Faraone/Getty
Applegate revealed in August 2021 that she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis earlier in the year. In March, the Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead actress said on the podcast that she had ended up in the hospital “upwards of 30 times” due to “throwing up and diarrhea and pain” just three years after diagnosis, although she had been told by a doctor that it was “not an MS thing.”
She was admitted to the hospital this time, she said, following a trip to visit family in Europe. Applegate was “not feeling good” and struggling with stomach pain the entire trip, but it wasn’t until she returned stateside that she checked-in.
“We flew back on our 11-hour flight, and I wasn’t feeling good. And I was really afraid to go back home and get to the point where I was so bad that like at three in the morning, my poor friend has to drive me, and it’s a Saturday night and it’s going to be horrible. So, I was like, ”m going to go and I’m not leaving there until I have some f—ing answers! Like, I’m done. Think outside the box. Don’t just leave me there, give me meds, and say, ‘You feel better now. You’re going home.’ I want to know why this is happening, and I want it to stop so that I don’t have to keep coming here.”
The next day, Applegate said, she began “getting a pain that I’ve never felt before on my right side in my back.” She panicked and thought her appendix might be bursting.
“Well, it also was radiating in the back,” continued. “So, I hate this word, but the whole flank — I’m going to say it just cause it’she worst f—ing word. Flank from my back to my front is in so much pain. I’m like screaming. And they ordered me an emergency CT at two o’clock in the morning. I went in and got a CT. And I had kidney infections.”
At one point, doctors thought Applegate might have a urinary tract infection, an idea that the actress joked about having “the cleanest vagina.” She’s “a clean girl down yonder,” she said.
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Because of the kidney infection, she said, she was being treated with antibiotics via an IV. There weren’t the answers that had hoped for yet.
“That’s where we’re at,” Applegate said. “And now they’re thinking that it could be something else, and I don’t want to say what they think, because I don’t want it to sound scary, but I’m just going to be here.”
Sigler, who also has MS, said she was so sorry to hear Applegate’s story.
The Emmy winner admitted that it wasn’t always easy to deal with and she sometimes breaks into tears, which she was holding back as she said it.
“I sometimes fall into the nurse’s arms like a freako,” Applegate said. “Just like crying.”
Listen to the full conversation between Applegate and Sigler above.