Actress Jamie-Lynn Sigler is opening up about her ongoing battle with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) one year after nearly losing her life.
During a June 4 episode of her “MeSsy” podcast with Christina Applegate, the 43-year-old detailed her near-death experience following a post-surgery complication.
Giving insight into her two-decade-long journey with the chronic illness, Ms. Sigler further elaborated on her health struggles and being hospitalized after returning to the U.S. from an ashram in India.
“A little less than a year ago now is when I went to India, and I lived in this ashram, and I felt so awakened and connected and peaceful, and when I came home two weeks later, I had a very bad reaction to a surgery and got sepsis and was in the hospital and almost died. I never told anybody this,” she recalled.
The health scare placed Ms. Sigler on a transformative path, as she defines 2023 to be her year of “grieving.” She allowed herself to break down and seek professional help in the process.
"I had never in my life been more sad, felt more low. But what I learned from India was I had an inability to escape it. I had to sit in it. I would scream in pillows, I would cry to girlfriends. I reached out, I sat by myself, I got a therapist. I did all of these things I had never really done before and went through this process that was absolutely necessary.”
The Sopranos star was diagnosed with MS at 20 years old and, while filming, kept the diagnosis hidden for over a decade.
Meanwhile, co-host Ms. Applegate, who shared her own MS diagnosis back in 2021, received support and encouragement from Ms. Sigler.
“I feel like you owe it to yourself to cry and really, really go there because how else are you going to have to bring it to the light? You have to allow yourself to feel that stuff.
“It’s so hard to live in a disabled body, I will not take that away from you and I’m right there with you. But what makes it harder is when you compare it to how it used to be,” she told Ms. Applegate.
‘Leveling Up’
The mom of two, who shares sons Beau, 10, and Jack, 6, with husband Cutter Dykstra, has been candid about her struggles with parenting through her illness.“I really don’t know how I would have found the person that I am today without it. And I’m so grateful for it,” she shared on the “Bathroom Chronicles” podcast last year.
“But I feel myself, like, leveling up and moving forward as a human being, but my body not following me, and it’s really, that’s my struggle now. You feel like it should be aligned, and it’s not. That’s the struggle in my family, to be quite honest, we all feel it.”
According to the Mayo Clinic, multiple sclerosis is a potentially disabling disease of the brain and central nervous system that can cause permanent damage or deterioration of the nerve fibers.
Symptoms vary from person to person, but the most common include fatigue, numbness or weakness, dizziness, lack of coordination, and tingling throughout the body.
Over 2 million people are reported to have MS globally, and it affects individuals between the ages of 20 and 40 years old. Women are more than two to three times as likely as men are to have relapsing-remitting MS.
While there is no cure for MS, the actress did note she is constantly looking into different treatment options and methods of healing but admits it’s hard to be healthy when not seeing improved results.
Overall, Ms. Sigler says when she finally stopped putting so much pressure on changing or fixing herself, she felt “lighter.”
