Christina Applegate Says MS Battle Has ‘Broken’ Her 14-Year-Old Daughter Sadie

Christina Applegate is reflecting on how her battle with multiple sclerosis has impacted her 14-year-old daughter, Sadie.

“I see her look at me when I’m in bed and can’t quite move, or I wanna go say goodnight to her in her room, but I can’t quite get down the hallway for whatever reason that my legs aren’t working that day,” Applegate, 53, said on the Tuesday, August 26, episode of the “MesSy” podcast. “Right now, I can barely get to the bathroom, it’s just the worst, but that’s neither here nor there. It’s broken her.”

She continued, “She didn’t know this. It was like losing the mom she had to this f***ing thing. And the more she’s gotten older now, I think the more it’s hurting her.”

Applegate explained that her and husband Martyn LeNoble’s daughter “only” knew the actress as “healthy and a runner and a Pelotoner and a dancer” before she got sick. (Applegate and LeNoble, 56, tied the knot in 2013.)

Sadie was “stoic” about her mom’s diagnosis in 2021, with Applegate recalling her family dealing with a new normal amid the COVID pandemic.

“We had just gone through COVID and no school and all this stuff, and now mommy can’t do all the things that she used to be able to do, and I see it in her eyes. I see it,” Applegate said. “But you know what’s really beautiful? When we’re out, she knows I’m having such a hard time because I have such anxiety about being out. And she’s always got my arm.”

Applegate continued, “She’s always trying to help me through and help me with my cane and all this stuff. At home, she’s like, ‘Can you please go down and make my food ‘cause you’re the only one who can make it?’ She’s like, ‘You’re going down all the steps.’ I’m like, ‘Sadie, I can’t make it down the f***ing steps.’ But I do it. I do it because I know that she’s checking in to make sure, can she still take care of me?”

Since sharing her diagnosis, Applegate has been candid about her battle with MS, which affects the brain, spinal cord and optic nerves, with symptoms including numbness, tingling, pain, fatigue, memory problems, mood changes, blindness and paralysis, per the National MS Society.

“I get up [in the morning] because of [Sadie],” Applegate said on a July 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 shared that Sadie’s comments were a “knife to [the] heart,” adding, “Very much so. 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.”