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Jamie-Lynn Sigler has just revealed a 15-year battle with multiple sclerosis that she has kept publicly secret until now.
“I wasn’t ready until now” to reveal her illness, first diagnosed at age 20, the 34-year-old Sigler told People magazine. “You’d think that after all these years, somebody would be settled with something like this, but it’s still hard to accept.”
Jamie-Lynn Sigler — who recently married Manhasset-born baseball player Cutter K. Dykstra, son of former Mets star Lenny Dykstra — said she had been without symptoms “for quite some time” but that her MS became acute within the last 10 years.
“I can’t walk for a long period of time without resting,” she told the magazine. “I cannot run. No superhero roles for me,” the actress, who gave birth to her and Dykstra’s son Beau in August 2013, added with a laugh. “Stairs? I can do them but they’re not the easiest. When I walk, I have to think about every single step, which is annoying and frustrating.”
While working on HBO’s acclaimed 1999 to 2007 suburban-mobster series “The Sopranos,” on which she played Meadow, daughter of crime boss Tony Soprano, “Sometimes all I needed was like five or 10 minutes to sit and recharge but I wouldn’t ask, because I didn’t want them to be suspicious,” she said. She went on to a recurring role on the series “Entourage” and to star in NBC’s “Guys with Kids.”
MS is known to occur more frequently in areas that are farther from the equator. Epidemiologists — scientists who study disease patterns — are looking at variations in geography, demographics (age, gender and ethnic background), genetics, infectious causes and migration patterns in an effort to understand why.
Studies have shown that people born in an area with a high risk of MS who then move — or migrate — to an area with a lower risk before the age of 15 assume the risk of their new area. Such data suggest that exposure to some environmental agent before puberty may predispose a person to develop MS later on.
Jamie-Lynn Sigler’s medications includes injections, infusions and the pill Tecfidera, which she must take twice daily. The regimen, which has kept her symptoms stable over the last six years, she said. “Things are manageable now. It takes a fighting attitude to deal with all this. This disease can absolutely take over your life if you let it.”
Agencies/Canadajournal
