Christina Applegate regrets calling double mastectomy a ‘blessing’ after breast cancer battle

Christina Applegate has admitted she still feels “disgusted” by the way she once described her breast cancer experience, revealing she now regrets calling her double mastectomy a “blessing.”

The 54-year-old actress reflected on the moment in her new memoir You With The Sad Eyes, where she revisits her 2008 breast cancer diagnosis and the emotional toll it took on her.

Applegate was diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer at age 36 after a routine MRI revealed she carried the BRCA1 gene mutation, which significantly increases the risk of developing the disease. She later underwent a double mastectomy and was eventually declared cancer-free.

Looking back, the actress said she tried to frame the experience positively in public appearances as a way to cope with the devastating loss.

“It was my way of coping with how brokenhearted I was to lose my breasts,” she wrote, as quoted by the New York Post.

“To this day, I feel emotionally and physically mangled by what I went through,” she added, explaining that her advocacy work for women at high risk of breast cancer helped soften some of the pain she felt.

However, Applegate now believes that some of the comments she made at the time may have done more harm than good.

She specifically reflected on an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show just one month after her surgery, where she described the experience as a blessing.

“It should have been a moment to share the truth,” she wrote. “I thought I should tell everyone that it was a blessing.”

Applegate explained that the idea had partly been influenced by fellow breast cancer survivor Melissa Etheridge, who had told her that the experience could be seen as a chance to start over and change one’s life.

But with hindsight, the actress said she feels she was not being honest about the pain she was going through.

“Here’s how I feel about that interview now. It was bulls***,” she admitted.

“I had lied, thinking I was being uplifting. I was acting like Little Ms. Warrior, but that’s not how I really felt.”

Applegate said she now worries that presenting the experience in such a positive light may have been hurtful to other women dealing with cancer.

“There I was, talking about f****** blessings when they were going through a living hell,” she wrote.

“I was setting up a paragon that no one going through cancer could ever rightly live up to.”

The actress also spoke candidly about the lasting emotional impact of losing her breasts, describing it as one of the most personal and devastating forms of amputation.

Although she noted that modern plastic surgery can create “very pretty boobies,” she said reconstruction could never truly replace what was lost.

“No amount of plastic surgery can ever make up for it,” she wrote, admitting she felt “alone and sad” as she mourned the loss.

Applegate faced another major health challenge in 2021 when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. This time, she said she made a conscious decision to be more honest about what she was going through.

“MS sucks,” she wrote, criticizing the overly positive tone she once used during her breast cancer media appearances.

Reflecting on that period, Applegate said it’s important to be truthful with people facing serious illness rather than forcing optimism.

“We need to stop ramming blessings down the throats of people in distress,” she wrote. “That’s not how we help people. We help people by radical, thoughtful honesty.”