Christina Applegate says she was recently hospitalised with double kidney infection

Christina Applegate has revealed she was recently in hospital for a week for a double kidney infection that left her “screaming” in pain.

The Dead To Me star, 53, said on the latest episode of her podcast MeSsy that she was recording it from the hospital – and wasn’t entirely sure what was wrong.

Applegate explained to co-host Jamie-Lynn Sigler that she was in Europe on vacation when she began to feel unwell, and decided to go to the hospital as soon as she landed while on the flight back to Los Angeles.

“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,” she said.

“So I was like, ‘I’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.”

She said the next day, she began to get “a pain that I’ve never felt before on my right side in my back,” which she thought could be from a burst appendix.

“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,” she said, adding that she was given antibiotics for the infection.

“That’s where we’re at. 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.”

In a statement to multiple US outlets after the episode was released, Applegate said that she had been treated for the kidney infection and was, by this point, home.

“I’m home and have been treated for the kidney infection. As far as my ongoing stomach thing, it’s a work in progress. I was there seven days,” Applegate told People magazine, in a statement via her representative.

In August 2021, Applegate revealed she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis a few months earlier and production on Netflix’s Dead to Me had to be halted for five months when she began treatment.

She has since spoken openly about the challenges that come with the neurological disorder, including feeling severely depressed because of the debilitating pain.

On the NHS website, MS is described as “a condition that affects the brain and spinal cord. It cannot currently be cured, but treatment can often help manage it.”

Symptoms can include extreme tiredness, vision problems, numbness in parts of the body, being off-balance or dizzy, muscle cramps and spasms, urination issues, memory problems, and sexual dysfunction.