Christina Applegate Can’t Shower or Bathe Amid MS Relapse, ‘Legs Have Never Been This Bad’

Speaking with co-host Jamie-Lynn Sigler, who is also living with MS, on their new podcast MeSsy, Applegate revealed that she hasn’t taken a shower in three weeks, quipping, “I need to buy stock in Cottonelle.”

The Dead to Me star went on to explain what she means, saying, “I can’t stand in my shower. There’s no f–king way.”

She has a bench in there, but even that’s not proving helpful. “I have such a small bench and my a– is so huge these days that I can’t sit on it, it’s like I slip right off of it,” she explained. “So, I’ve been Cottonelle-ing my body.”

The situation has gotten so bad for Applegate that she says she no longer interacts with anyone except for her 12-year-old daughter Sadie, who has not been shy in expressing her thoughts on Applegate’s aroma.

“[She’s] always like, ‘Oh Mama, that’s bad.’ I make her smell my armpits, just to make her vomit,” Applegate told Sigler.

As for why bathing has become a veritable impossibility, Applegate said that her symptoms have gotten pretty severe, saying that her “legs are just done” and she has “no energy.” On top of that, she said she feels like something is going on with her right eye.

“I haven’t slept for 24 hours because my eye is doing something weird where every time I close my eye to go to sleep my right eye starts to shift,” she explained.

As for her lower half, the Married… with Children alum said she’s been experiencing an “insane tingling that just has spurts of tingles that are weird coming from, like, my butt down.”

“Legs are just done. I can’t get circulation. I can’t get them to stop hurting,” she added. noting that she’d been unable to walk even just to the bathroom without “feeling like I’m going to fall.”

Ultimately, Applegate conceded she’s definitely “going to have to go in and see someone because it’s a little scary and freaking me out that my eye is going to burst out of my face or something. I’m a little concerned about that, and my legs have never been this bad, so I don’t know what’s going on.”

Right now, her coping mechanism for dealing with it all is to kind of not deal with it all. She said all she finds herself able to do is “lay in a dark room, watching TV, wanting it all to go away.”

Fans who’ve seen Applegate making recent talk show appearances — and even walking the stage at the Emmys in January — needn’t worry, though, as reps for the actress told People that she had been experiencing a relapse a few months back, when this podcast episode was recorded, but she is no longer in relapse.

That means it was actually more recently than this podcast when Applegate appeared with Dax Shepard on his Armchair Expert podcast where she revealed she had “30 lesions” on her brain, with the largest one behind her right eye; the same one that had been giving her trouble during the relapse.

She told Shepard that she still has her vision, but experiences pain in her right eye. She also detailed issues with her hand and getting “a seizure-y feeling sometimes in my brain,” calling MS the “worst thing that’s happened” in her “entire life.”

Humor has been her best coping mechanism, with Applegate explaining to Shepard, “”I make these jokes because if I don’t, I’ll suffocate. I’ll be done,” Applegate shared. “I’m not ready for the healing yet. I will get there. When someone says, ‘Have you accepted this as your new normal?’ No, f–k you, absolutely not.”

Part of what makes her want to be so forthright about her MS battle comes from how she handled having breast cancer back in 2008.

“When I had breast cancer at 36 years old, I went out and I was the good girl talking about, ‘Oh, I love my new boobs!’ That are all scarred and f–ked up. What was I thinking?” Applegate recalled. “Everything I was saying was a freaking lie. It was me trying to convince myself of something, and I think that did no service to anyone.”